I Watched The Dark Tower Movie. I Have Some Thoughts On It…

A good adaption that didn’t translate to a good movie

First of all, if you’ve read the Dark Tower books and want to see how Hollywood visualized this masterpiece, I would advise you to reduce your expectations before you walk into the cinema.

I never really pay attention to movie reviews. If you’ve read reviews for the Transformers movies, you would think it was a pile of crap and you don’t need to spend any of your money to see it. But if you did watch it, you would realize that it was nothing more than mindless entertainment which many movie would gladly go see.

Most of the reviews of the Dark Tower movie all had the same theme of “it’s not like the book”, which is something I totally expected.

I expected an adaption with key missing characters. But I didn’t expect an adaption which was, to be honest, not great.

Where’s The Character Development

Throughout the movie, I had a hard time rooting for any of the characters. Jake Chambers in this movie is totally forgettable. It was either the writers didn’t give the actor enough to work with or it was just poor acting. I couldn’t empathise with him at all. The movie focuses more on his side of the story which makes sense in this adaptation but the character himself is a miss.

Idris Alba as “The Gunslinger” Roland

Idris Alba tries his best as the “Gunslinger” known as Roland but again, the movie just didn’t give him enough room with work with. We see glimpses of him with his father and get little tidbits about his past but it all feels shallow. It’s like the movie just assumes movie goers will have all read the book and get the references when its thrown into the movie. But that was a bad idea because it made the movie feel disjointed and ruined the flow.

Matthew McCougnhey is the only saving grace in this movie. His character known as Walter has charm and also grabs the attention whenever he is on screen. I was more fascinated by Walter than most of the main characters in the movie.

A great performance by McConaughey couldn’t save this movie

Disjointed

That’s what this movie felt. It felt disjointed. Some scenes never flowed, some of the dialogue was weak and frankly, it was boring at times. There were action scenes with Roland which were cool but within the next scene, all that was gone.

Low Expectations Didn’t Help In The End

I never expected Hollywood to compress all 7 books of Stephen King’s Dark Tower into a single movie. But this adaptation doesn’t really do it justice regardless.

Would have other central characters like Susannah and Eddie have made this movie better? Maybe. But trying to fit all that in for one movie would be difficult. I have no problem with the movie writers focusing on Jake Chambers but they could have been a better job with the characters overall.

But there is still hope for you Dark Tower fans out there. There will be a TV adaption and hopefully it can expand on the Dark Tower universe and give fans a much better experience than the movie.

The Dark Tower movie could have been better. I wish it was better. Whether you’ve read the book or not, you come out of the movie theatre felling let down and wishing it could have been better.

Joseph-Albert Kuuire

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My personal writing space. (UX Designer | Blogger | Social Introvert) UX Design writing: https://medium.com/ghuxdesign

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