The Dark Tower (Movie Review)

The Dark Tower 
Directed by Nikolaj Arcel

11-year-old Jake Chambers doesn't have a very happy life. His dad is dead and his stepdad doesn't love him. He's been in and out of therapy but it doesn't seem to help him. He's also getting bullied at school. On top of all these real world problems, Jake suffers from nightmares and visions at night. He dreams of children being used to power a weapon aimed at The Dark Tower, an edifice that protects the universe from demonic and hellish powers. He dreams of the Man in Black and the gunslinger that hunts him, Roland Deschain. He spends most of his free time making drawings of the things he sees. Of course everyone, including his mom, thinks Jake is crazy. When Jake finds a gateway to the world he's been seeing in his visions, he finds that everything he thought might be just his imagination is all too real. He soon becomes a companion to the Gunslinger on his quest to kill the Man in Black and maybe even save the entire universe in the process.

I guess I'll start out with what I liked about this movie, which isn't much. Probably the ONLY thing I thought was first rate was the young actor Tom Taylor as Jake Chambers. In actuality, I would say HE is the main character of this movie, not Roland. The role calls for a lot of range, from childish innocence to terror to despair to playfulness. He does it all without getting too Anakin Skywalker grumpy moody.

I probably had some negative feelings about Idris Elba being cast as Roland since in the books, the gunslinger is white and to me I picture Clint Eastwood from the Man With No Name trilogy, cowboy hat and all. To me, in this movie, Roland comes across more as an amalgam between Blade and a leftover character from Rogue One. Especially his costume design. It doesn't feel like the Old West. I'm not saying he shoulda been riding a horse and spitting chewing tobacco. Just put on a hat dude.

I also thought about the reverse racism going on in Hollywood these days. I read an article that mentioned Akiva Goldsman's opinion about people being against his casting of Elba. He said "racist assholes should go fuck themselves!".  Now, if you don't know, Akiva has written a LOT of shit movies...the worst being Batman and Robin. He's also responsible for unleashing the Divergent series, and the 5th Wave, so you can't really trust his judgments.

We know what would have happened if in the Dark Tower novels, Roland had been black and they cast a white actor in the movie. There would have been protests, backlash all over Twitter and the internet about "white washing". But if you give a black man a white man's role, its not controversial, its "cutting edge", "cool" etc. Elba will probably be up for an Oscar for this part.

To me, I think Elba is overrated. Everyone seems to want to make him the next Denzel Washington, but really the only part I've seen him play is a dope smoking don't give a shit about alien lifeform readings on an alien planet just go fuck Cherlize Theron ship captain from the worst sci-fi movie of all time, Prometheus. Some people want him to be the next James Bond. Why? Because he's black?
He does an ok job with Roland, but there really isn't very much to play....maybe a flashback scene to him and his dad (the dude from the Allstate commercial) making a last stand against evil armies and a big battle scene where we see nothing. You don't really get a sense of the history between Roland, the Man in Black, and Midworld.

The worst casting of the movie was Matthew McConaughey as the Man in Black. He lacks any sense of menace and it's hard to see him as evil since he's wearing the exact same outfits he wears in the Lincoln Continental car commercials. He just comes off as weird and creepy, like some guy you'd catch peeking in your bathroom window. And he has two weirdly nerdy scientists that help him with his evil plans who seem oddly out of place in the setting. The Man in Black reminded me too much of a poor man's Darth Vader.

The production values of the movie reminded me of something you would see on HBO. Like they had 5 guys that played the monsters and they would just recycle them in different shots. Makeup was nonexistent. They wrapped a lot of the creatures faces in cloth probably to save money on effects shots. It would have been a lot more interesting to give Roland's gun a cool sound when it fired, but instead it was just the same old six shooter sound. To me, the whole film felt like a bad 80s B-movie with a relatively cheap 21st century budget.

As far as the script of the movie, I heard a lot of conflicting things about when this movie takes place. I read that it was a prequel to the books, an adaptation of the 1st and 3rd novels, and that it happened AFTER all the novels. I will tell you this, I read the first novel the week before the movie came out and it helped me understand the backstory a lot more between Roland and The Man in Black. There was maybe one flashback in the movie whereas there were several in the book. It also helped me understand what had gone on in Midworld before the movie began.

I've been around a while and I have to say out of all the movies, tv series, etc made from Stephen King works, there's probably only been about one or two that I actually enjoyed. It's really kinda sad. This movie definitely falls in the sucks category. Even if you think the movie is bad, please give the books a chance. In fact, skip the movie and read the first Dark Tower book instead.

My Grade: C