How bad will the dark tower be?

Hey you guys

For and years years I've been wanting this series to come to the big screen only to have it all fizzle out again and again. Until finally it actually became a thing and now I just can't seem to see this as anything but a total disaster. A shame.

Have you read the books?

Will you be watching the movie?

I haven't read the books, but what about it doesn't look good? I think it looks amazing.

Looks good.

The trailers have me excited. Never read the books though.

I've read the books and i have concerns with the movie, but will give it a fair shot. I'd like to see them make a movie based on the books, not continue the story after the books ended.

Now if I could get a way of kings tv show or movie, I'd be so happy. It needs to happen.

It's quite unfortunate the review embargo hasn't been lifted yet. That's usually a glaring sign it's going to be so bad and the studios can't bare to lose a dollar over opening weekend due to blasted hype.

@jaydan:

What a review embargo?

I haven't read the books but I'm looking forward to seeing the movie and I think the trailers look quite good.

@Ugalde-: An embargo is basically a ban from commercial exploitation upon the request of a source. So in the case of a review embargo, a movie studio will often place one on a movie until a certain date, and that date all review sources can't publish reviews until after that date.

If a movie studio knows their product is going to be bad they often will not lift its embargo until literally a 'day before' / 'day of' release to prevent bad press from tanking its potential of making money at all.

You will often see a movie studio have an embargo lifted months prior to release because they have the confidence that good word-of-mouth and rave reviews will ultimately get people excited for their product.

In the case of The Dark Tower, it's only a day from release and there is still not a single review of it. It's not that there aren't review screenings for the film happening, it just happens to be the case reviewers are probably coming out feeling negative over the experience and the studio has the embargo as a shield to prevent bad reception before it's even released.

It appears IGN broke the ice with their review posted: http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/08/03/the-dark-tower-review?read

They gave it a 5/10.

@foxhound_fox: what we have seen looks fine enough on the surface but worried that it won't capture what the book series is going for. Which this seems to be based on the first book but mixing stuff from later on too. Which is fine and all but the movie is only like 95 mins long and my worry is that it won't be what fans want and may not resonate with audiences in general. Killing hope for ever seeing the books come to life.

Like for example the first book is mainly set in a western type setting where Roland is chasing the man in black and meets the kid jake. Which is what this movie seems to be about. And we get a glimpse of the western setting but we get a whole bunch of stuff set in the modern day. Which is fine if they build out the world and stuff. But my fear is that there isn't enough time to really do that in 95 mins

Forced my way through the first book and wondering if I should continue.

@MonsieurX: first book generally is regarded as the most slow and plodding.

Picks up and really expands out in the 2nd book

Movies based off of Stephen King books tend to better than the actual books.

No idea ...if a few people here says its good..then I'll probably check it out...don't really trust movie reviewers/critics. :P

Looks like crap, it's a poor strategy for the franchise in the first place, and furthermore, the movie opens this week and there's a review lockdown. It's gonna be bad.

Looks crappy

I haven't read the books but after watching the trailers I'm less interested than when I first found out about this movie.

Pretty bad as it turns out

@jaydan:

Interesting. How do the filmmakers stop the review companies from releasing a review?

For those of you who have never read the Dark Tower Books, I'll gladly just bring you guys up to speed on Dark Tower.

The Dark Tower is Stephen King's magnum opus. It's a high fantasy science-fiction western horror. It crosses a lot of different genres. The story follows a Gunslinger named Roland on his quest to find The Dark Tower. Gunslingers are like Arthurian knights. While on his journey to find the tower, Roland pursues the enigmatic Man in Black. The Man in Black is a wizard that has tormented Roland for centuries. Roland wants to find the Tower to try and preserve his dying world which has "moved on."

The Dark Tower relies very heavily on the theory of multiple universes. If there are multiple universes, then The Dark Tower would be the nexus point where all universes and all times meet together in a single instance. The series is heavily influenced off of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, but it also draws heavy inspiration from Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Think of the entire series as a mix between those two. The story transcends multiple genres though, including gangster stories similar to Pulp Fiction and even other stories similar to Star Wars. The story is kind of like the video game Kingdom Hearts, in the sense that the characters travel to different worlds. Most of the world's are from Stephen King's other works. But characters from other Stephen King Novels transcend into the story as well with some extremely memorable cameos

The story is complex and the characters are memorable. It's the only book series I have read that ever made me cry but I still prefer Gunslinger book. It's a fantastic piece of literature and is definitely worth your time investing into. The movie looks like a hack job (but not all that bad from what I seen from the trailers) that hardly follows the books. The books are poetic and slow paced, with vast amounts of dialogue, lore and story. The film looks to be cutting most of that out and replacing the magic and lore with strange technology. It doesn't look all that bad, but I'm still really excited to finally see an interpretation of this story on film.

I'm totally looking forward to the Movie and I'll be going to go see it Friday night.

That could be a lawsuit right there. Let's say IGN publishes a review for a movie or a video game a week before a review embargo expires, that could put them under hefty fines and/or a lawsuit.

@davillain-: I know The Dark Tower series is known as his magnum opus but I got to about 200 pages through the 3rd book and just gave up on it. It really didn't strike me as anything truly amazing by King. Personally, I would say It is his magnum opus as that 1100+ page monster has so much more going for it. It feels much more of a nightmare with its horror elements than the events that happen in beginning books of The Dark Tower series. Also, if Stephen King is known as one of the best horror writers of all time, it puzzles me that of all his books (It, The Shining, Pet Sematery, The Stand, Carrie, Cujo, Salem's Lot, etc.), his magnum opus is this series.

Maybe I'm wrong, but the story of Roland the gunslinger is pretty boring to me. I also heard that the last 4 books in the series turned out to be duds after King got hit by a car and focused on finishing the series before his eventual death (should it have happened). That doesn't really add to my motivation to finishing the story.

@jaydan: Don't think IGN has anything to worry about. Reviews are coming in from major sites and newspapers now, and...well, there not exactly glowing.

I'm reading book right now, wanted to before movie comes out. I thought the trailer looked good though, is it the black cowboy that already has you worried?

The book doesn't read like other books of his I've read. Maybe the movie has a chance to surpass it. Premise kind of reminds me of a Last Action Hero kind of film.

I'm not sure if the series though was supposed to just be an isolated thing. I thought I read a while back the lore of Dark Tower series links into lore with his other books. Figure a serious King fan would appreciate that, but I'm no King buff so I figured that would be lost on me.

@lamprey263: I don't see color

I want the guy to be bond and people keep mentioning his skin color as if that has anything to do with my desire to have him be bond

Like guys not everything has to be about race

@dave123321: some people could simply be upset that the jesture of his casting is political correctness and that's enough to send some people in a tizzy

Making the movie a sequel to the books was always felt weird to me. And then making the supposed tv series a sequel to the movie just makes the whole thing a mess.

@jaydan:

That's crazy.

That's not what I was saying, I was using IGN as a hypothetical example if they were to violate an embargo placement the kind of consequence they (or any source) could face.

I don't know, there was quite a bit of garbage in the books. So I don't see anything wrong with doing a mostly faithful adaptation, fixing the parts that sucked, and then saying "Horn of Eld, sequel, yadda yadda yadda."

But see, just the way that they ACTUALLY went about it sort of seems like a copout. Rather than trying to do a mostly faithful adaptation and using the "sequel" excuse to change the things that sucked, it seemed like they were never interested in doing a faithful adaptation to begin with. And that they then tried to use the "sequel" angle to shield themselves from criticism.

The sequel thing COULD work to the movies' benefit, but the impression I got was that they were just lazily using the sequel angle to do whatever the hell they want without even really trying to respect the source material.

The books are probably among the top 10 books written by King and the series is worth a read.

As to the movie, well it´s a movie and this book is not Harry potter or Hunger games , it´s actually well written and deep. So of course the movie won't be able to cover everything and will suffer because of it.

I doubt that's even the biggest problem. Sure, a 90 minute movie stands pretty much no chance of covering everything in the series, but most people who watch movies haven't read the Dark Tower series. They're not making this movie to please Dark Tower fans, they're making this movie to be appealing to general audiences. Having said that, even if this movie sucks as a Dark Tower adaptation, there's zero reason why it shouldn't be good on its own merits as a film when comparisons to the books are removed.

Here's the thing though: reviews say that it sucks. Are all of those reviewers Dark Tower fanboys who are peeved that the movie doesn't sufficinetly cover the material in the books? I doubt it. Far more likely is that most of the reviewers never read the entire Dark Tower series and instead just think that the movie sucks as a movie. Keep in mind that there was a review embargo in place up until yesterday. If Sony thought that this worked as a movie, then they wouldn't have placed a lockdown on reviews this close to the release date.

I'd wager that the majority of people spending money on the Lord of the Rings movie series or the Game of Thrones television series haven't ever read the source material. Those series hit it big because they worked as their own thing. Someone completely unfamiliar with the novels could go straight to the movies or shows and get a satisfying experience. By all accounts, this hasn't happened with The Dark Tower. People aren't just saying that this sucks as an adaptation of the source material, people are saying this sucks as a movie. The fact that the book series couldn't be possibly done within the confines of a single movie isn't an excuse. The filmmakers knew what they were working with, they should have properly adapted the source material so that each movie is satisfying on its own merits.

I don't know anything about its comics or past. I'm going tonight to a Dolby screening at our local SF Metreon, and i can't wait. It looks like a great movie, i'll definitely let you know what i think of it.

@dave123321: @lamprey263: Steven King approved the casting. That's it. That really invalidates the "it doesn't fit" argument since they're his characters. He came up with everything about them and if he thinks a certain actor fits, then he fits. Roland is always described as intimidating as Hell but still very regal and dignified. Just physically that describes Elba to a tee. But after seeing that trailer … good Lord, Elba just nails the tone of Roland better than I ever dreamed possible. That clip at the end where he tells someone to shush just before he blindly shoots through that village and hits the goon in the head, that's the most Gunslinger badass shot I could possibly imagine. Roland being black has no implications on any interactions with Susannah Dean/Detta Walker/Odetta Holmes because the story will not happen the same way... I really wish people would actually read the book and comprehend what they're trying to do with the movie...they aren't remaking the books, they're continuing the story.

These books are known to be slow pacing and more deep complex. It's all good if you find them boring, it's a slow pace that you need to put more time into them. Stephen Kings also admits he was on Crack while writing his books, take IT for example, in the book, the kids did a gang bang on the the girl and that's why he has these weird things when he's writing getting high. King has been through some shits, it's why he writes these things.

@davillain-: then I guess it's even more imperative that I finish the book before seeing the movie, regarding the bit where the movie continues on from where the book leaves off

anyhow, I'm not too far into the book, at the point after where he basically slaughters the town and afterwards where he runs into the boy, learned how he died and has little memory of how he ended up in the desert

@davillain-: I don't think anyone here has actually questioned elba being Roland

I'm all for a sequel if done right and with care

This just seems not that

The movie is for teenagers not adults. I think I would like it more if I saw it 10 years ago. 6/10