BASED ON THE BOOKS (8) BY STEVEN KING
The last Gunslinger, Roland Deschain, has been locked in an eternal
battle with Walter O'Dim, also known as the Man in Black, 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 Dark Tower (2017)
Director:
Nikolaj ArcelStars:
Country:
USALanguage:
EnglishRelease Date:
30 August 2017 (Philippines) See more »Also Known As:
La Torre Oscura See more »Box Office
Budget:
$66.000.000 (estimated)
See more »
Company Credits
Technical Specs
Runtime:
Sound Mix:
IMAX 6-Track | Dolby Surround 7.1 | Dolby Atmos | Datasat | 12-Track Digital Sound | Auro 11.1Color:
ColorAspect Ratio:
2.39 : 1
During the first act of the film, several Stephen King Easter eggs are
visible. The twins from "The Shining", the family (including the dog)
from "Cujo", and the car from "Christine" (as the toy pushed by Jake in
his room) are each shown briefly.
The story is based on the eight books by Steven King, and the book are awesome, everyone should have read them, and then there is the thing that those content of eight books was put into a movie, which about 95 minutes only.
I think this is a total misleading in understanding the content of the books, and to be honest, I cannot understand why this content was put down into a movie, which is everything else than a wow, after leaving the cinema. We have an incredible cast with honored names like Idris Elba, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Taylor, Claudia Kim, Fran Kranz, Abbey Lee Kershaw, or Jackie Earle Haley and those characters do not have the time to convince us because of the high speed of action and the wrapping of content into those 95 minutes.
Let's make this clear at the beginning of this review before we go into further details and let's talk about the technic first.
The camera is kept in a dark tone, everything needs to be fast, and the camera is not an exception here. The effects are just fine, some of them, especially when the movies wants to make a final, they are so rough, no HD, and cheesy at the same time, that I had the feeling to see a comedy movie, which fails seen at the intension of the movie.
The settings are well places, epic towns ad buildings, caves, and also a trip into the universe is placed in that at the end disappointment coming from Hollywood.
So let's talk about the things why the movies fails a bit to tell us his full story and why the movie actually should be a start of a frenchaise, but it won't, which is sad.
For over a decade, some of Hollywood's most successful storytellers have wanted to turn Stephen King's eight-book Dark Tower
saga into movies. Few, presumably, started out with the idea that the
best way to wrangle this mountain of plot was to write a new sequel to
it. That's roughly what Danish director Nikolaj Arcel offers in The Dark Tower,
weaving elements from the published books into a new premise suggested
by the series' end and paring the whole mythology down enough to fit
into a mere hour and a half. Recent industry gossip described a troubled
shoot and early edits that were so confusing to test audiences they
prompted much postproduction tinkering by producers and studio execs.
That's tough to believe when looking at the finished product, a
save-the-multiverse sci-fi fantasy that is, if anything, too easily
digested.
Though far from the muddled train wreck we've been led to expect, this Tower
lacks the world-constructing gravitas of either the Tolkien books that
inspired King or the franchise-launching movies that Sony execs surely
have in mind. Though satisfying enough to please many casual moviegoers
drawn in by King's name and stars Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, it
will likely disappoint many serious fans and leave other newbies
underwhelmed.
Things begin promisingly, with visions of impending doom that haunt
the nightmares of a New York City kid named Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor).
Despite (or maybe because of) the specificity of these John the
Baptist-grade revelations, Jake's parents and shrink are sure it's all a
fantasy, the emotional fallout of a death in the family. But the
mysterious Man in Black that Jake has seen in his dreams knows
otherwise, and his minions are already en route to kidnap the boy.
The Man in Black is McConaughey's Walter O'Dim, a sorcerer known by
several names in King's books. We'll soon learn that he's attempting to
harness the psychic energy of gifted children to destroy the eponymous
Tower, which protects not just our planet (known here as "Keystone
Earth") but an unknown number of parallel worlds. Beyond these worlds
lies a void full of monsters, we're told. Though nobody ever hints at
why Walter might want to set unpredictable, violent monsters loose on
infinite Earths instead of just ruling over them — he coos commands to
people and they magically do whatever he asks — it's hard to have a
save-the-universe adventure without a villain bent on destruction.
Jake manages to find a teleportation gizmo that sends him into one of
those parallel Earths — a post-apocalyptic place called Mid-World whose
inhabitants have fought Walter for, presumably, eons. Elba plays Roland
Deschain, the last of an honorable warrior clan called the Jedi Knigh—
er, the Gunslingers. Somehow resistant to Walter's spells, he has
endured while the Man in Black killed everyone he loved. He agrees to
help Jake on his quest, but only in order to slay Walter; Roland no
longer has the stomach for saving the galaxy.
Heaven knows, the books offer more invention than could fit in one
feature film — reading just the first two paragraphs of Wikipedia's
entry on Jake Chambers excited me more than anything Dark Tower
contains — but in their effort to introduce newcomers to this world,
the filmmakers make the saga's contents look not archetypal but generic
and cobbled together. Walter's giant weapon looks like the Starkiller
from The Force Awakens, spitting a giant beam of fire out
toward a de-Sauroned version of the scary edifice in Tolkien's Mordor;
Jake, who has great psychic gifts, looks like the same "One Who Was
Prophesied" we've met in every wish-fulfillment fantasy targeted at
youngsters since Luke Skywalker learned to see things with his eyes
closed.
Elba and McConaughey give the movie exactly what it needs from them:
tarnished righteousness and stoic wisdom from the former, unruffled
indifference to humanity's suffering from the latter. Production and
effects departments make the picture quite good-looking, action scenes
play well and, though the setups are sometimes inelegant, a few comic
moments land nicely. But no scene in this film even approaches the
rousing, lump-in-the-throat power of the first Lord of the Rings film, or even of the initial chapter of The Hunger Games.
An optimist would say that the Harry Potter movies survived a couple of
stiff opening chapters to hit their stride midway through. But that
series relied on the loyalty of a different sort of fan. Older and
wiser, longtime Stephen King readers know how much Hollywood wants their
attention. If they shrug their shoulders at this Dark Tower, a better one might come along before you can say "reboot."
I
was very disappointed being a casual Dark Tower fan. With so much
material and so many great opportunities to pull action, this movie
falls flat.
Thinking back, this book series probably was not to be made into a movie. Condensing Roland's ka-tet into a Hollywood flick was a recipe for a let down.
Thinking back, this book series probably was not to be made into a movie. Condensing Roland's ka-tet into a Hollywood flick was a recipe for a let down.
6/10 genre
6/10 overall
Thanks for reading and have fun watching movies.
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