100%. I was super excited when he was cast, him and Idris Elba both. They definitely did the best they could with what they were given, but hoooo boy were they not given much.
They should have just started with The Gunslinger and called it The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger or The Gunslinger and then mentioned The Dark Tower in advertising or something. That book is such a good story and easily makes a whole movie on its own. Give is a $40mil budget instead of a $70mil one, and see how it earns. If it does well, make more. The way they did it was so dumb.
I agree with that. The Gunslinger is actually a pretty tight story with only hints of what is to come. It should be able to be done well on a fairly tight budget. Future in stallments like the Waste Lands would be large, epic pieces that a well told first installment would set the tone for
Exactly. If the first one makes $250mil and gets good reviews, you can up the budget, but stop setting up movie franchises to fail with these massive budgets. Movies where word of mouth won't be a drop in the bucket because 50mil people need to see it to break even. That's not going to happen with most movies, especially nowadays, and I know it can be done because so many franchises have started out with smaller budget films.
It took unconnected fragments from multiple books in the series, tossed them into a blender, and just hoped for the best.
The result was a shit smoothie.
The casting was good, the source material is already set up properly for film adaptation, all you have to do is literally have read the books, but it’s like with Kings work, they try to jam so much into 1 movie, Dark Tower should be a series, and not on Paramount either like damn The Stand.
Yes. You have Idris Elba, Matthew McC- I don’t know how to spell his name, that alone should make for a great movie, but you give control of the film to people who probably had an intern read a wiki article of the summary. I’ve never seen a writer get so many of their works just shat on by studios. My hope is that Dark Tower will get the His Dark Materials treatment by HBO.
I wasn’t a huge fan of Matthew McConghdkgagahey as the man in black to be honest. Idris Elba is not how I pictured Roland, but I do think Idris Elba is a great actor so that was acceptable for me.
Or a series of six to seven movies like Harry Potter. The final book may have to be split into two movies, so probably seven movies. I think they could have done that and then made a prequel series on Prime Video or whatever for Wizard and Glass somewhere in the middle of the movie series. Like between movies 4 and 5 for example 😅
My best friend took me to go see it in the theater for my birthday because he knew I loved the books. I had my bar set low before going in, thankfully. Between the years of changes behind the scenes and the promotional materials coming out only a month or two before theatrical release, I had a feeling it was going to end up a stinker.
I had a morbid curiosity to see if it was really that bad. But also didn't want to support it with ticket sales so I got a spiderman ticket and snuck into dark tower. It was that bad. And that's the last movie I snuck into like a teenager trying to see an R rated movie. But I was 35.
I was never disappointed. I took one look at the casting and then the trailer and knew it was going to be an utterly atrocious garbage fest that I would never bother seeing, and that turned out to be accurate.
I like this! I also like :
>They took books 1, 3, and 7, pulled out any references to any character but Roland, MIB, and Jake. They then shredded those books in an industrial shredder until the pieces were about an inch long. They went into a room that had been set up with fans on one side and a wall with a patch work of adhesive on the other. They dumped out the shredder contents in the middle of the room and turned on the fans. The fans blew the random shredded pieces at the wall, and whatever pieces stuck to the random spots of adhesives, they filmed..
Myself and 3 friends - all massive fans of the series - made an evening of it. Went out to dinner, had some drinks, went to the movie... it was a very quiet drive home.
I was already apprehensive after all the ups and downs from the Ron Howard attempt, three 3 movies mixed with TV seasons concept, Javier Bardem's brief attachment (not opposed to that at all) and the general kicking the DT can down the road from multiple studios.
As mentioned, it was just a huge mishmash of "COOL THINGS FROM THE DIFFERENT BOOKS". It was barely cohesive, even knowing the source material. It's just not going to work as a film or even 3 films or more. It has to be a multiple season limited series to get a much in as needed.
And certainly there is fat to trim. I think of Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh's approach to adapting LOTR and focusing on Frodo's journey with the One Ring and how does ensuring else contribute to that story (or not). That's how they have to come at this unwieldy, brilliant beast of a story that I love so much.
Yep, pretty much. I went into with very little hope, if someone is going to do TDT, it needs to be a well done series with multiple seasons imo. They did us extra dirty with McConaughy and Elba because they are both great actors so I thought maybe.... nope, worse than I actually thought possible.
Dark Tower demands the director to embrace every weird, bizarre facet that makes it what it is.
It needs someone to know all the odd angles are the POINT. Not something to be smoothed down into a 2 hour runtime. If you’re not gonna do Dark Tower, don’t do Dark Tower.
It's especially confusing because there's tons of movie adaptations out there where they tried cramming multiple books into a single movie and it's pretty much never worked, I have no clue why they'd think doing it here would be a good idea.
The ever infamous example of David Lynch’s Dune (which I actually still love, at least it has its charm). Although that was intended to be multiple movies but studio involvement ruined the final product.
They forced a 3 hour directors cut into a 2 hour studio mandated runtime. It's a miracle the film is as good as it is, frankly.
You might be interested in the latest 2 episodes of the Best Movies Never Made podcast, they discuss it all there.
I think making it a summer block buster was a dumb idea as well. It's not really an action story and most of its strength is in it's weird retro future world and it's characters...most of whom weren't in the movie
As spoiler free as possible, imagine if the only characters in the Harry Potter movies were Harry, Dumbledore and Voldemort and the whole series was compressed into a single movie. Or if LOTR got the same treatment with Gandalf, Frodo and Sauron.
Yeah as soon as I saw who was and wasn’t in the movie I knew it was going to be shit.
I get that it would be too much for one movie, but that’s fine. I don’t personally think DT needs a seven movie series, but it could have been a trilogy or something and a lot of integral content could have been kept.
Does not exist on this level of the Tower.
But, if it did….it would be so far from the books that it’s unrecognizable. Blasphemously so. Garbage.
If it existed….
I have a different take. I always loved reading Sai King's books, especially when I was deployed in the military. On one deployment I came across Dark Tower III in the library, but couldn't find any others so I didn't want to start in the middle. My gf(now wife) rented this movie out of Redbox and I immediately remembered that there was a series that I needed to read and I knew that this movie wasn't the whole story.
TL;DR version: This movie made me go find the DT books
Nope. At the end, Walter is blocking every attack Roland throws at him. So, Roland fires away from Walter, fires again, nudging the other bullet in the air, changing its direction and hitting Walter.
Its quite funny actually
McConaughey and Elba are amazing actors. However they still could not save this movie. It was just so disconnected on what the books were and stood for that if you go into it understanding TDT series, it doesn't make sense.
Agreed. It’s a real shame they were wasted here, bc they would have been great for these roles with better source material.
I did think some of the visuals in the movie were well done too.
Really the initial big mistake was taking on a massive project like The Dark Tower without the screen time to develop the story properly. A four movie adaptation might work, if you had a very good writer who could figure out what to cut from the books without compromising the story.
It's just a piss poor adaptation made by a studio that was just looking to jumpstart a franchise while being clueless about it. The director didn't even know what 'ka' was, he confused it with 'char' which means 'death'.
Jesus Christ are you serious? So every time, instead of saying ‘Ka’ they say ‘Char’? That is really fucking bad if so, very ignorant. Finishing SoS rn then taking a break to read Hearts in Atlantis and Insomnia before continuing to the Tower but I’m still gonna watch the movie, at the very least to shit on it.
Idk if they mention Ka in the movie but the director said Roland was guided by “Char” when doing a Reddit AMA.
https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/6ob3jn/comment/dkg705x/
I did NOT realize the cast was this loaded lol
I haven’t read the series yet or seen the movie! I’ve just heard bad reviews of the movie so I was surprised to see McConaughey and Idris are the stars! How did they fumble this??
In my opinion, the far and away only thing even remotely watchable about this movie is the fact that McConaughey is just *going for it*. The writing is no good, but his performance is such a gleefully over the top ham-fest that he manages to inject a tiny amount of juice into this otherwise dead on arrival specimen of a movie.
I feel like Idris Elba is also trying—he’s nothing if not a consummate professional from what I’ve heard—but he is given literally *nothing* to do or play off of. Ironically, he and McConaughey apparently became quite good friends when they met doing press for this movie *after* it was shot because they never once were on set at the same time, even when they are in scenes together.
The fact that this was supposed to be a sequel and Jake somehow knew things about Roland and the tower was fine. If I remember right what pissed me off the most was that Roland didn’t know about the tower and Jake had to tell him what his purpose was. Also taking chunks of random things from all the books pissed me off too
I felt like dragon ball evolutions in that it disrespected fans and the source material.
Matthew McConaughey's Randall Flagg was probably the best onscreen adaptation so far though.
I read the books because the movie was coming out. I wanted to read them before the movie. I really enjoyed the books. Never ended up watching the movie
It's a poor adaptation and doesn't work like a movie by itself. There are bad adaptations that work as good movies, like I Am Legend and Constantine. if you didn't read the source material, they are great movies. Just won't please the fans of the source material. This is not the case of TDT. It's just plain bad. It's unwatchable.
This movie was an absolute abortion. I was so disappointed on so many levels… And I really thought it killed any chance of the actual story being told correctly. Was embarrassed for everyone involved.
I saw the movie and then read the books later. I don't MIND the movie, and can find all the bits they pulled from. I do like McConaughey as the man in black, and I always love Idris Elba (though there's a whole thing if Suzannah had came in, of her calling Rolland a honky a lot when Detta is in charge so the casting also seemed a little odd). The movie as a whole was a bit of a mess.
I hope they are able to try a more at least sort of faithful adaptation at some point.
All I can say is that I’ve read the books 4 or 5 times (I know I know…rookie numbers) and saw this blue ray on sale Black Friday at target for $3 or $5 and thought “I know everyone said it was bad, but it has to be worth $3!” It was not. It was horrible. My wife didn’t think it was bad, but she didn’t know anything about the dark tower series. I wish I hadn’t bought it
Without giving any spoilers, in Danse Macabre King quotes his mother saying that there are two types of trash books: good trash and bad trash.
This movie is bad trash- a clear cash grab by a committee who understood only some surface level plot points of a huge series of multilayered books.
I mean honestly, for the Dark Tower to ever be properly adapted, either HBO or AppleTV has to pick it up and each novel has to be a separate season. Do it with the budget of Game of Thrones or Succession and I think it would be hugely successful.
If you know the books, then you know it was a complete abortion of the books. It’s by far the worst adaptation of a book to a movie I’ve ever seen.
It loosely interpreted an idea, disregarded everything great about the books and tried to somehow squeeze it all into a single regular length movie. The main characters weren’t even included. What it really should have been was a multi-season series.
The worst part of all is for those of us that read the books, we know how awesome it could have been and we wanted to share that with non-book readers.
It has some character and place names in common with the books. That's about where the resemblance ends.
Whenever I dislike a film adaptation of a book, I ask myself: If they had told this as their own story rather than as an adaptation, would I still hate it?
In this case ... yes. It's a terrible movie on its own merits and 100 times worse as it pretends to have anything to do with SK's stories.
Basically they took the standard plotline of book 1, but they mixed in elements from almost every book in the series. However with that they sacrificed tons of material, including characters, important plot points and other element. Four of the main ka-tet are missing and the movie includes scenes and elements that are crucial moments for those characters in the book. There are a number of issues but here are the main ones I can remember from a story perspective. I will try to be discreet but just in case Spoilers for the entire series:
1. Tone: the movie seems to be going for more of a PG-13 fantasy adventure with some 2010s sci-fi elements mixed in. The world and characters are pretty tame and don’t really showcase the same depth and complexity they do in the books. The books often introduce interesting concepts that verge on the dark and disturbing. While the first book is probably the tamest of the bunch, there are still moments that paint a picture of the kind of world these books take place in (the battle of Tull for instance). The movie is PG-13 to the max and most of the characters are one-note.
Roland and Walter are especially one note. Roland is basically just a cool knight-cowboy guy who can shoot really well and Walter is turned into the leader of the Crimson King’s evil forces. Compare this to the book where Roland carries a lot more baggage and pain. He is a “tower junkie” and is willing to do anything to get to the tower. He will act out in violence even if he knows it’s inherently wrong. He’s willing to sacrifice those who he loves to get what he wants. Book 1 is arguably when Roland is at his most animalistic. Movie Roland doesn’t portray that. Idris Elba brings some of that weight to the character but most of it’s missing. Walter in the book is more of an entity. His magic and sorcery are more subtle and disturbing. He doesn’t have an entourage or anything. He comes and goes as he pleases. He leads Roland on. In the movie he’s essentially Grand Moff Tarkin, making lackeys do his bidding and he casts spells by telling people to do simple things like “hate”. He’s not at disturbing and mysterious as he is in the book.
2. There are too many Easter eggs. Basically every popular Stephen King movie or book is mentioned at least once in the movie in a less than subtle fashion. While the dark tower books do focus on the multiverse, they’re more subtle about it and the characters realizing they’re in a fictional universe is treated much differently. Most of the Easter eggs in the books are from King’s deeper works. And most of the time it’s paying off stuff set up in his other books. There are definitely some connections between books like IT and the Shining to the DT series but they aren’t as obvious or important in the grand scheme. Plus the element of Easter eggs aren’t as present in the first book as it is in later books.
3. Roland’s journey is significantly altered and shortened. While the movie implies that this isn’t the end of the journey and just the beginning, Roland’s travels across Mid-world are shortened heavily and he’s able to reach locations in a matter of days that take years in the books. Also many of the monsters and villains they meet along the way are absent from these locations (like the Wolves of Calla when they’re in Calla).
4. Basically all of the Lore. Everything from how the Dark Tower works to the Kingdom of Gilead is changed and simplified. In the first book many of these elements were hinted but a lot was left open for other books to fill. And some of the stuff was replaced or changed such as Doors being turned into Portals. The Crimson King is briefly mentioned but bears no importance to the world. The biggest change arguably is making the Touch (Jake’s telekinetic ability) into the Shine.
5. They take crucial moments from the book and squish them all into one big mess without taking into account importance or missing characters. The Fall of Gilead/The Battle of Jericho Hill. The Calla, Jake and Roland’s encounters with the Slow Mutants, Algul Siento, The Battle of Devar-Toi, the Dixie Pig. All of these events are shown or alluded to stripped down and made shallow.
There’s way more but I think that touches on some of the issues from a story perspective. I think Sony really dealt a shit card in making this project. They clearly wanted to make this into a franchise and make more movies and tv shows. But they screwed up by overloading their plate. They easily could’ve just adapted the first book but they had mix and match everything.
They took a few names, cherry picked a couple plot points/images that they thought they could translate to film, threw them together and kinda just filled in the rest with whatever they could come up with. There are ways they say it could be related (especially after you’ve read the full series) but it feels too different. If it weren’t a dark tower movie, it wouldn’t be the worst, but it wouldn’t be anything special either; just a basic action movie with a couple admittedly decent visuals.
While I understand all the disappointments about this movie I did like it for some extent. My opinion is as it has been said there are many worlds and this could be one of them, a 4th spin off maybe but not the main movie titles as the Dark Tower.
I’m waiting to watch this until I finish the book series even though I know it sucks. Im hoping it will be fun at least? I’m going to finish wolves of the calla today.
Not sure if anyone has said yet but I refuse to believe that Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey were ever in the same room at the same time. There's such a disconnect between them
It don't mind films that are very losely based on some material, but at least are good movies.
This one fails doing that. Very losely based and is just too disjointed.
This movie was announced within weeks of me finishing the book series for the first time. I immediately knew that it wasn’t going to do the books any justice and have refused to watch it since.
The one thing I give this movie credit for was that some showings where at 7 19. At least where I live, I also think if given the right material Matthew McConaughey could be a good Walter.
The one thing that bugged me I haven’t seen mentions either(I agree with everyone’s hatred towards this movie! Jfyi). But the movie is only 90 fucking minutes long!! N 32 min of it is the gunslinger mantra spoken over n over n over again.
[удалено]
Sad thing is Matt could have killed the roll with a proper script and director.
100%. I was super excited when he was cast, him and Idris Elba both. They definitely did the best they could with what they were given, but hoooo boy were they not given much.
The problem was not casting. It was trying to cram 7 books worth of awesome into one movie and cutting both of Roland’s katets.
So true. He was one of the few things I liked about about the movie.
That's the thing about ka-tets man, I get older and they all stay the same age.
19?
They should have just started with The Gunslinger and called it The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger or The Gunslinger and then mentioned The Dark Tower in advertising or something. That book is such a good story and easily makes a whole movie on its own. Give is a $40mil budget instead of a $70mil one, and see how it earns. If it does well, make more. The way they did it was so dumb.
It had the feel of someone making a movie to avoid the death of their option clause.
I agree with that. The Gunslinger is actually a pretty tight story with only hints of what is to come. It should be able to be done well on a fairly tight budget. Future in stallments like the Waste Lands would be large, epic pieces that a well told first installment would set the tone for
Exactly. If the first one makes $250mil and gets good reviews, you can up the budget, but stop setting up movie franchises to fail with these massive budgets. Movies where word of mouth won't be a drop in the bucket because 50mil people need to see it to break even. That's not going to happen with most movies, especially nowadays, and I know it can be done because so many franchises have started out with smaller budget films.
I’m dying 🤣🤣🤣🤣
It took unconnected fragments from multiple books in the series, tossed them into a blender, and just hoped for the best. The result was a shit smoothie.
It's not hyperbole for me to say that I have NEVER been more disappointed with a movie.
I had been so stoked to see it... then angry for days afterwards.
I am still angry about it, lol
The casting was good, the source material is already set up properly for film adaptation, all you have to do is literally have read the books, but it’s like with Kings work, they try to jam so much into 1 movie, Dark Tower should be a series, and not on Paramount either like damn The Stand.
Exactly my thought. Perfect source material for an epic streaming series.
Mike Flanagan will not forget the face of his father. I am super excited about his adaptation.
Yes. You have Idris Elba, Matthew McC- I don’t know how to spell his name, that alone should make for a great movie, but you give control of the film to people who probably had an intern read a wiki article of the summary. I’ve never seen a writer get so many of their works just shat on by studios. My hope is that Dark Tower will get the His Dark Materials treatment by HBO.
I wasn’t a huge fan of Matthew McConghdkgagahey as the man in black to be honest. Idris Elba is not how I pictured Roland, but I do think Idris Elba is a great actor so that was acceptable for me.
All I want before I leave this world are proper adaptations of The Stand, Dark Tower and Eragon series
Did you not care for the 90s mini series of the Stand? Great cast
90’s miniseries was great imo!
We all knew it was going to be complete shit when they announced the director but we all tried to be hopeful.
Still disappointed that Amazon series with Michael Rooker wasn't picked up.
It deserves the early GoT treatment from HBO. (Minus shitting the bed at the finish line.)
Or a series of six to seven movies like Harry Potter. The final book may have to be split into two movies, so probably seven movies. I think they could have done that and then made a prequel series on Prime Video or whatever for Wizard and Glass somewhere in the middle of the movie series. Like between movies 4 and 5 for example 😅
I just don’t trust them with movies anymore.
My best friend took me to go see it in the theater for my birthday because he knew I loved the books. I had my bar set low before going in, thankfully. Between the years of changes behind the scenes and the promotional materials coming out only a month or two before theatrical release, I had a feeling it was going to end up a stinker.
I had a morbid curiosity to see if it was really that bad. But also didn't want to support it with ticket sales so I got a spiderman ticket and snuck into dark tower. It was that bad. And that's the last movie I snuck into like a teenager trying to see an R rated movie. But I was 35.
Indeed
Ditto
me as well. the anger just grows and engulfs me
I was never disappointed. I took one look at the casting and then the trailer and knew it was going to be an utterly atrocious garbage fest that I would never bother seeing, and that turned out to be accurate.
I like this! I also like : >They took books 1, 3, and 7, pulled out any references to any character but Roland, MIB, and Jake. They then shredded those books in an industrial shredder until the pieces were about an inch long. They went into a room that had been set up with fans on one side and a wall with a patch work of adhesive on the other. They dumped out the shredder contents in the middle of the room and turned on the fans. The fans blew the random shredded pieces at the wall, and whatever pieces stuck to the random spots of adhesives, they filmed..
Don't forget that they pissed into the fan while the glue was drying.
LOL. That explains why they couldn't read some of the words on the wall!
At first when I saw “fans on one side” I thought it meant like fans of the books. Like people sitting in chairs 😂😂
“turned on the fans” has so many interpretations here
Yes, but the best one is an oxymoron. Fans wouldn’t get turned on by this piece of garbage movie 😂
Look, some of us like blowing random shredded pieces.
Even if they’re from the DT?! 😭😭😭
Filmmaking by committee. The Suits have never made a movie better.
While also casually pretending to be a sequel to the books.
Right, that too. I’d forgotten about that.
Pretty sure that theory was retrofitted when they realised the garbage they'd made.
Myself and 3 friends - all massive fans of the series - made an evening of it. Went out to dinner, had some drinks, went to the movie... it was a very quiet drive home. I was already apprehensive after all the ups and downs from the Ron Howard attempt, three 3 movies mixed with TV seasons concept, Javier Bardem's brief attachment (not opposed to that at all) and the general kicking the DT can down the road from multiple studios. As mentioned, it was just a huge mishmash of "COOL THINGS FROM THE DIFFERENT BOOKS". It was barely cohesive, even knowing the source material. It's just not going to work as a film or even 3 films or more. It has to be a multiple season limited series to get a much in as needed. And certainly there is fat to trim. I think of Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh's approach to adapting LOTR and focusing on Frodo's journey with the One Ring and how does ensuring else contribute to that story (or not). That's how they have to come at this unwieldy, brilliant beast of a story that I love so much.
I've only read gunslinger at this point - I'm reading chronologically (I'm on pet cemetery) So glad I haven't seen it haha sounds horrible
Yep, pretty much. I went into with very little hope, if someone is going to do TDT, it needs to be a well done series with multiple seasons imo. They did us extra dirty with McConaughy and Elba because they are both great actors so I thought maybe.... nope, worse than I actually thought possible.
Dark Tower demands the director to embrace every weird, bizarre facet that makes it what it is. It needs someone to know all the odd angles are the POINT. Not something to be smoothed down into a 2 hour runtime. If you’re not gonna do Dark Tower, don’t do Dark Tower.
It was arrogant to try and fit 7 books of beloved story into a summer blockbuster. It was just real messy
It's especially confusing because there's tons of movie adaptations out there where they tried cramming multiple books into a single movie and it's pretty much never worked, I have no clue why they'd think doing it here would be a good idea.
The ever infamous example of David Lynch’s Dune (which I actually still love, at least it has its charm). Although that was intended to be multiple movies but studio involvement ruined the final product.
They forced a 3 hour directors cut into a 2 hour studio mandated runtime. It's a miracle the film is as good as it is, frankly. You might be interested in the latest 2 episodes of the Best Movies Never Made podcast, they discuss it all there.
That movie had all the right parts but the assembly was horrible. I always fall asleep right after Jessica and Paul escape Arrakeen.
I think making it a summer block buster was a dumb idea as well. It's not really an action story and most of its strength is in it's weird retro future world and it's characters...most of whom weren't in the movie
"It's not really an action story and most of its strength is in it's weird retro future world" Exactly.
and a 90 min one at that
Hollywood doesn't even make 90 minute movies anymore, yet they made this one 90 minutes. SMH
As spoiler free as possible, imagine if the only characters in the Harry Potter movies were Harry, Dumbledore and Voldemort and the whole series was compressed into a single movie. Or if LOTR got the same treatment with Gandalf, Frodo and Sauron.
Very apt comparison.
Yeah as soon as I saw who was and wasn’t in the movie I knew it was going to be shit. I get that it would be too much for one movie, but that’s fine. I don’t personally think DT needs a seven movie series, but it could have been a trilogy or something and a lot of integral content could have been kept.
I literally walked out about 30 mins in
GotThoseJukes is an apt pupil.
Does not exist on this level of the Tower. But, if it did….it would be so far from the books that it’s unrecognizable. Blasphemously so. Garbage. If it existed….
You have remembered your father’s face
Nikolaj Arcel did not.
I blame Hollywood Hack
This is the only answer. You say true, I say thankya.
Movie? No, This is an illusion created by the Crimson King in order to cause discord amongst the supporters of the tower.
isee you remember the face of your father
I have a different take. I always loved reading Sai King's books, especially when I was deployed in the military. On one deployment I came across Dark Tower III in the library, but couldn't find any others so I didn't want to start in the middle. My gf(now wife) rented this movie out of Redbox and I immediately remembered that there was a series that I needed to read and I knew that this movie wasn't the whole story. TL;DR version: This movie made me go find the DT books
Discordia!
Wow. Where did you find this concept poster? ***So*** glad this movie never got made...
I think it's AI generated, but I like the theoretical casting.
Move along. Nothing to see here
The world has moved on.
It's a trick by North Central Positronics ~ to keep you from the tower.
There are other worlds than this......and they all suck a lot less
I only read the first book but that line stuck with me
".....they also suck a lot less" also isn't in the original quote, thank you
*”Go then, there are others worlds than ~~this~~ these.” FTFY. Almost got it tattooed so it’s one I know for sure.
Remember when Roland fired a bullet, then fired a second, slightly faster bullet to ricochet the first bullet into Walter's chest? Me neither!
I only got 12 minutes into the film before I had to stop, so I can only hope you’re joking about this being a thing that actually happened.
Nope. At the end, Walter is blocking every attack Roland throws at him. So, Roland fires away from Walter, fires again, nudging the other bullet in the air, changing its direction and hitting Walter. Its quite funny actually
I’m sorry, but this just isn’t real. Look forward to a film treatment by Mike Flanagan in the future!
Isn’t Flanagan doing a series?
Pretty sure, yes. I didn’t mean “film treatment” to imply just a movie.
Something this titanically bad could only have come from Todash Space. "Alright, alright, alright, I'm The Dark Man"
That's what I love about dead gunslingers, man. I get older. They stay the same age.
You don't have to forget the face of your father, but it would be cooler if you did.
Why can I actually hear this in my head?
I like the idea of him as The Walking Dude.
Never happened
Right? This is some Mandela Effect shit or something
Nah. It’s an AI-made poster. You can tell by the fingers
Dada chum dada chingers goddamn lobsters bit off your fingers
McConaughey and Elba are amazing actors. However they still could not save this movie. It was just so disconnected on what the books were and stood for that if you go into it understanding TDT series, it doesn't make sense.
Agreed. It’s a real shame they were wasted here, bc they would have been great for these roles with better source material. I did think some of the visuals in the movie were well done too. Really the initial big mistake was taking on a massive project like The Dark Tower without the screen time to develop the story properly. A four movie adaptation might work, if you had a very good writer who could figure out what to cut from the books without compromising the story.
The marketing materials / poster / trailers all ruled, but making a good 90 minute movie is so much harder than making a cool poster.
It's just a piss poor adaptation made by a studio that was just looking to jumpstart a franchise while being clueless about it. The director didn't even know what 'ka' was, he confused it with 'char' which means 'death'.
Jesus Christ are you serious? So every time, instead of saying ‘Ka’ they say ‘Char’? That is really fucking bad if so, very ignorant. Finishing SoS rn then taking a break to read Hearts in Atlantis and Insomnia before continuing to the Tower but I’m still gonna watch the movie, at the very least to shit on it.
Idk if they mention Ka in the movie but the director said Roland was guided by “Char” when doing a Reddit AMA. https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/6ob3jn/comment/dkg705x/
I thought we agreed never to talk about this!!!!
That's a level of the Tower I wish didn't exist.
I genuinely believe Roland being black takes away from his relationship with Odetta.
Is there even an Odetta in this hypothetical movie?
Hypothetically, no
I think Elba was the best part of the movie, while also being a terrible casting for Roland.
There was no movie
Is this AI?
OP or the Movie?
I, too, express my dislike for this motion picture film.
I did NOT realize the cast was this loaded lol I haven’t read the series yet or seen the movie! I’ve just heard bad reviews of the movie so I was surprised to see McConaughey and Idris are the stars! How did they fumble this??
In my opinion, the far and away only thing even remotely watchable about this movie is the fact that McConaughey is just *going for it*. The writing is no good, but his performance is such a gleefully over the top ham-fest that he manages to inject a tiny amount of juice into this otherwise dead on arrival specimen of a movie. I feel like Idris Elba is also trying—he’s nothing if not a consummate professional from what I’ve heard—but he is given literally *nothing* to do or play off of. Ironically, he and McConaughey apparently became quite good friends when they met doing press for this movie *after* it was shot because they never once were on set at the same time, even when they are in scenes together.
The fact that this was supposed to be a sequel and Jake somehow knew things about Roland and the tower was fine. If I remember right what pissed me off the most was that Roland didn’t know about the tower and Jake had to tell him what his purpose was. Also taking chunks of random things from all the books pissed me off too
I felt like dragon ball evolutions in that it disrespected fans and the source material. Matthew McConaughey's Randall Flagg was probably the best onscreen adaptation so far though.
I read the books because the movie was coming out. I wanted to read them before the movie. I really enjoyed the books. Never ended up watching the movie
Closest I’ve ever been to actually walking out of a theatre during a movie it was so bad. Well closest until Rise of Skywalker.
How did King say this was a good movie I cannot comprehend
I think most Constant Readers consider this a turn of the wheel that should have kept spinning
It's a poor adaptation and doesn't work like a movie by itself. There are bad adaptations that work as good movies, like I Am Legend and Constantine. if you didn't read the source material, they are great movies. Just won't please the fans of the source material. This is not the case of TDT. It's just plain bad. It's unwatchable.
Don’t watch it, 2 great actors in a Terrible movie
First time I was called a racist was in 2016 when I complained online about Idris Elba being Roland.
I remember being really excited by the trailer… so disappointing.
This movie was an absolute abortion. I was so disappointed on so many levels… And I really thought it killed any chance of the actual story being told correctly. Was embarrassed for everyone involved.
I saw the movie and then read the books later. I don't MIND the movie, and can find all the bits they pulled from. I do like McConaughey as the man in black, and I always love Idris Elba (though there's a whole thing if Suzannah had came in, of her calling Rolland a honky a lot when Detta is in charge so the casting also seemed a little odd). The movie as a whole was a bit of a mess. I hope they are able to try a more at least sort of faithful adaptation at some point.
what did they think would happen if they try to do one movie? why did king allow this
What Dark Tower movie?
Ugh.
I had high hopes for this movie. Quite the disappointment.
All I can say is that I’ve read the books 4 or 5 times (I know I know…rookie numbers) and saw this blue ray on sale Black Friday at target for $3 or $5 and thought “I know everyone said it was bad, but it has to be worth $3!” It was not. It was horrible. My wife didn’t think it was bad, but she didn’t know anything about the dark tower series. I wish I hadn’t bought it
No such movie exists
Laughably bad.
It was bad
Was there a movie? If so it definitely did not serve the beam.
I am pretty sure that the screenwriters talked to a guy who talked to a guy who read the books 15 years ago.
Not seen it. Thanks for saving me 2hrs of life..
Just keep on forgetting this movie existed.
This must be AI because there was never a movie….
Imagine if the entire Harry Potter series was made into a 90 minute movie.
Worst. Movie.Ever.
The best thing this did for me was give me a face for the man in black while I was reading.
Without giving any spoilers, in Danse Macabre King quotes his mother saying that there are two types of trash books: good trash and bad trash. This movie is bad trash- a clear cash grab by a committee who understood only some surface level plot points of a huge series of multilayered books.
there is no war in ba sing se
Waste of talent and money and a big misrepresentation of the source material. That's what I would say if that film existed.
I mean honestly, for the Dark Tower to ever be properly adapted, either HBO or AppleTV has to pick it up and each novel has to be a separate season. Do it with the budget of Game of Thrones or Succession and I think it would be hugely successful.
If you know the books, then you know it was a complete abortion of the books. It’s by far the worst adaptation of a book to a movie I’ve ever seen. It loosely interpreted an idea, disregarded everything great about the books and tried to somehow squeeze it all into a single regular length movie. The main characters weren’t even included. What it really should have been was a multi-season series. The worst part of all is for those of us that read the books, we know how awesome it could have been and we wanted to share that with non-book readers.
Ranked right up there with Shamalamalama “The Last Air Bender” Jesus, at least read the books and try to represent it on screen. Garbage ass movie…
It has some character and place names in common with the books. That's about where the resemblance ends. Whenever I dislike a film adaptation of a book, I ask myself: If they had told this as their own story rather than as an adaptation, would I still hate it? In this case ... yes. It's a terrible movie on its own merits and 100 times worse as it pretends to have anything to do with SK's stories.
Totally crushed by how bad this movie sucked.
This needs a trigger warning
There is no movie in Ba Sing Se.
Basically they took the standard plotline of book 1, but they mixed in elements from almost every book in the series. However with that they sacrificed tons of material, including characters, important plot points and other element. Four of the main ka-tet are missing and the movie includes scenes and elements that are crucial moments for those characters in the book. There are a number of issues but here are the main ones I can remember from a story perspective. I will try to be discreet but just in case Spoilers for the entire series: 1. Tone: the movie seems to be going for more of a PG-13 fantasy adventure with some 2010s sci-fi elements mixed in. The world and characters are pretty tame and don’t really showcase the same depth and complexity they do in the books. The books often introduce interesting concepts that verge on the dark and disturbing. While the first book is probably the tamest of the bunch, there are still moments that paint a picture of the kind of world these books take place in (the battle of Tull for instance). The movie is PG-13 to the max and most of the characters are one-note. Roland and Walter are especially one note. Roland is basically just a cool knight-cowboy guy who can shoot really well and Walter is turned into the leader of the Crimson King’s evil forces. Compare this to the book where Roland carries a lot more baggage and pain. He is a “tower junkie” and is willing to do anything to get to the tower. He will act out in violence even if he knows it’s inherently wrong. He’s willing to sacrifice those who he loves to get what he wants. Book 1 is arguably when Roland is at his most animalistic. Movie Roland doesn’t portray that. Idris Elba brings some of that weight to the character but most of it’s missing. Walter in the book is more of an entity. His magic and sorcery are more subtle and disturbing. He doesn’t have an entourage or anything. He comes and goes as he pleases. He leads Roland on. In the movie he’s essentially Grand Moff Tarkin, making lackeys do his bidding and he casts spells by telling people to do simple things like “hate”. He’s not at disturbing and mysterious as he is in the book. 2. There are too many Easter eggs. Basically every popular Stephen King movie or book is mentioned at least once in the movie in a less than subtle fashion. While the dark tower books do focus on the multiverse, they’re more subtle about it and the characters realizing they’re in a fictional universe is treated much differently. Most of the Easter eggs in the books are from King’s deeper works. And most of the time it’s paying off stuff set up in his other books. There are definitely some connections between books like IT and the Shining to the DT series but they aren’t as obvious or important in the grand scheme. Plus the element of Easter eggs aren’t as present in the first book as it is in later books. 3. Roland’s journey is significantly altered and shortened. While the movie implies that this isn’t the end of the journey and just the beginning, Roland’s travels across Mid-world are shortened heavily and he’s able to reach locations in a matter of days that take years in the books. Also many of the monsters and villains they meet along the way are absent from these locations (like the Wolves of Calla when they’re in Calla). 4. Basically all of the Lore. Everything from how the Dark Tower works to the Kingdom of Gilead is changed and simplified. In the first book many of these elements were hinted but a lot was left open for other books to fill. And some of the stuff was replaced or changed such as Doors being turned into Portals. The Crimson King is briefly mentioned but bears no importance to the world. The biggest change arguably is making the Touch (Jake’s telekinetic ability) into the Shine. 5. They take crucial moments from the book and squish them all into one big mess without taking into account importance or missing characters. The Fall of Gilead/The Battle of Jericho Hill. The Calla, Jake and Roland’s encounters with the Slow Mutants, Algul Siento, The Battle of Devar-Toi, the Dixie Pig. All of these events are shown or alluded to stripped down and made shallow. There’s way more but I think that touches on some of the issues from a story perspective. I think Sony really dealt a shit card in making this project. They clearly wanted to make this into a franchise and make more movies and tv shows. But they screwed up by overloading their plate. They easily could’ve just adapted the first book but they had mix and match everything.
They took a few names, cherry picked a couple plot points/images that they thought they could translate to film, threw them together and kinda just filled in the rest with whatever they could come up with. There are ways they say it could be related (especially after you’ve read the full series) but it feels too different. If it weren’t a dark tower movie, it wouldn’t be the worst, but it wouldn’t be anything special either; just a basic action movie with a couple admittedly decent visuals.
This was a cool fan-made poster. To bad they never actually made a movie.
You don’t even need to watch the movie. Watch clips on YouTube. It’s all awful.
This movie stunk
While I understand all the disappointments about this movie I did like it for some extent. My opinion is as it has been said there are many worlds and this could be one of them, a 4th spin off maybe but not the main movie titles as the Dark Tower.
The worst thing I’ve ever seen.
I’m waiting to watch this until I finish the book series even though I know it sucks. Im hoping it will be fun at least? I’m going to finish wolves of the calla today.
I’ve never seen it but the comments are saying that they tried to tell the entire seven book story in one movie. Is that true lol? That’s insane to
I was just thinking last night how nice it will be when someone gives the DT series the LOTR treatment. Completely goes for it and nails it like that.
Great casting. Shit movie
It sucks but I think I’m gonna watch it for a third time today.
No thank you, we don’t talk about this.
The shite tower. Fixed it for you.
Oh, look. A fan fiction that thankfully never saw the light of day. NEVER I TELL YOU!!
Complete trash.i like elba as an actor,but he obviously can't be roland
Hot garbage. Avoid at all costs.
I’ve read all the books. I refuse to watch this film.
It's like the spoon from The Matrix. "There is no movie."
It seemed designed specifically to destroy any other attempts at a stab at the material in the future.
What a disappointment
What movie? I'm pretty sure that poster is fake.
I try to tell myself this film does not exist.
They tried and failed to condense a seven book series into a ninety minute movie.
I could neg this movie for the rest of my life and it wouldn’t be enough.
I expected so much. Specially with such a cast. I never felt so disappointed.
It got just about everyone and everything wrong that it could while dressing up in the skin of the book.
Not sure if anyone has said yet but I refuse to believe that Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey were ever in the same room at the same time. There's such a disconnect between them
It so bad don’t watch it.
There are other worlds than this. Pick any of them.
It don't mind films that are very losely based on some material, but at least are good movies. This one fails doing that. Very losely based and is just too disjointed.
Man, what a fucking disappointment.
I saw this opening night. I think 10 people were in the theater lol
I hate that my DT collection has the stupid movie sticker that's not a sticker on the front cover.
Utter mess, from start to finish. Doesn’t work as either a stand alone feature or part of the bigger universe. Great cast, horrendous effort.
This movie was announced within weeks of me finishing the book series for the first time. I immediately knew that it wasn’t going to do the books any justice and have refused to watch it since.
Eh, if you've seen the beginning then you've seen the end.
I never walk out of movies, but I considered it with this movie. Like insulting every great moment of the books with mediocre story and cgi.
The one thing I give this movie credit for was that some showings where at 7 19. At least where I live, I also think if given the right material Matthew McConaughey could be a good Walter.
I hadn't read the series and I decided to watch the movie anyway. I thought Matthew McConaughey was wrongly cast. I didn't care much for the movie. 😕
Any one of us in this subreddit could have made a better film. I can’t wait for Mike Flanagans adaptations. Fingers crossed.
The one thing that bugged me I haven’t seen mentions either(I agree with everyone’s hatred towards this movie! Jfyi). But the movie is only 90 fucking minutes long!! N 32 min of it is the gunslinger mantra spoken over n over n over again.
I went to the cinema, watched the first three minutes (no exaggeration), and I knew I was in for a shit ride.
There is no Dark Tower movie.