The Dark Tower

I had not read any of the Stephen King books before I went to see The Dark Tower, and honestly I am glad that I didn’t. Most of the critics that are bashing this movie into the dirt are loyal fans to the original source material, which causes bias, so as a stranger to the characters I tried to be as open as possible to the quality of this movie. To say it simply: it was shallow, but enjoyable.

The first act of the movie was not that bad; there was a lot of visual exposition that were well done and I enjoyed, but the movie didn’t build onto it. After the real conflict started all exposition was spoon-fed to the main character, and the audience, in a generically lazy way. I loved the trailer to this movie, it was exciting and action packed, but half of the scenes in the trailer weren’t even in the final cut of the movie, and nothing more was added to replace them. Who ever edited The Dark Tower did not care about the feel of the movie. Every. Single. Shot. Was. Choppy. Short. Brief. Sometimes meaningless. If the director had passion for this project, he showed none of it. It is the director’s job as a visionary to give their projects a feel or certain style from their point of view; a cinematographer, not a visionary, shot this movie. Atomic Blonde had style, a feel with color and music that I could reach out and grab. This movie had good music, but it didn’t make me feel anything, and the shots were there to simply show me what Idris Elba and Matthew MaConaughey were doing.

That brings me to the story itself. There were four screenwriters for this movie, and it showed; some scenes never connected to the rest of the movie, and others were flat out dispensable and could have allowed more time for better character development. The last scene, the moment that should wrap up the entire story and close all character arcs, completely changed the tone of the movie and forgot the entire struggle the main character had to endure before that moment. Sony had to spend six million dollars on reshoots to flesh out Idris Elba’s character after horrible test screenings, and for me those parts were the best moments of the movie. He and the child actor, Tom Taylor, had decent performances, especially because of the reshoots, but the editing team chopped them into pieces with quick cuts and short scenes. The production behind the scenes was an absolute mess, but in the end the movie was missing two things: FLOW and CHARACTER. Those two elements are key to having a high quality movie.

With a team of four screenwriters there can be a problem that happens in a movie, and it happened in this one; everything was as shallow as a puddle on a sidewalk. The kid’s mom said a handful of cliché lines, her boyfriend was a stereotypical jerk that wanted to get rid of the kid, Idris Elba was a mouth piece for exposition, as well as the psychic Asian girl in the village, and Matthew MaConaughey was on a whole other level. He had fun playing the role of the Man in Black, but the character had no reason why he was doing what he was doing. He walked up to people, waved his hand, and said “Stop breathing.” and they would keel over and die. What kind of dramatic tension is created out of a guy that can do anything? Why does he want to blow up the tower? How is he a friend of Idris Elba’s character if they’re on opposing sides of the war? Why is a person so evil named Walter? Why does he send a bunch of rat people to do his work if he can turn a house into a splinter-snake demon? None of these questions are answered because the screenwriters did not care. By the end of the movie I had to look back and ask myself, "Did any of the characters change?" Yeah, a little bit, but only in the last ten minutes of the movie, excluding the last scene when all development was thrown away. There was nothing gradually increasing throughout the movie. The stakes never grew and neither did the tension because the infamous "Man in Black" was too busy talking to a sexy 'vampire girl' (That was her name in the credits) instead of getting his hands dirty. Also, I didn't even know there were vampires in this movie until I saw the credits, how does a team of screenwriters and a director shoehorn in most of the exposition, but fail to reference that there were vampires?

I don’t like tearing someone else’s work apart, especially if they put their heart and soul into it, but this movie was a mess from the beginning. There is a director out there that loves Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft works and has begged to make movies like this, GUILLERMO DEL TORO, and that man is a GENIUS. He is a Writer and Director that would have gladly, and passionately, made this movie, but Sony, and some other company that only focused on advertising, hired a Director that was in over his head and four more people to write it like a stitched mess with an editing team that never let the scenes play out. How could I tell? Well, there was a moment where a henchman person was walking towards Idris Elba to start a fight scene, but nope, a car ran him over and crashed into a building. Idris Elba then stood up and started going towards the car to enter the building. It then cut to him inside walking towards the next scene. What about the guy in the car, would the gunslinger care about him or pass him to exact his selfish revenge against the Man in Black? The audience never found out because the editors thought it wasn’t necessary. When the Director lets the camera roll, a scene is made with meaning and character development, even if it is tiny, it can still leave something for the audience to hold onto when bullets begin ricocheting off steel beams and each other.

Fans of the Stephen King series will hate this adaptation because it mashed several stories from different books into one, short movie with no time to breathe or recollect what was happening. Fans of Matthew MaConaughey will enjoy his flare but might notice how little he does to the story. Meanwhile, Fans of Idris Elba will enjoy his chemistry with Tom Taylor, a pretty good and hopefully rising child actor, as well as the gun shooting scenes; they were the enjoyable aspect to this movie. If you are not interested in the two note-worthy things I just said, then go see Detroit. I’ve heard it’s powerful and has real tension, two things this blockbuster never tried to have.

Story Rating: 4/10

Character Rating: 4/10