After spending year after year in development hell, when it was finally announced that prolific author Stephen King’s magnum opus The Dark Tower series was finally being made into a film, fans rejoiced and awaited what should have become one of, if not, the best King adaptation. With director Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair) attached, and two of the best leading men in the business, Idris Elba (Luther) and Matthew McConaughey (Interstellar) playing The Gunslinger/Roland Deschain and uber-villain The Man in Black/Walter respectively; all looked rosy in pre-production. However, after slapping a whopping 6 month delay on the film’s release and extensive, expensive re-shoots, everything that once looked so promising was rapidly going downhill. What followed this production nightmare is unfortunately one of the year’s biggest critical flops and perhaps the worst King adaptation to date, and this happened for a multitude of reasons:
A fantasy world that falls flat on its feet.
What struck me so quickly into The Dark Tower was that how obvious the studio interference was; and it is evident that despite having the opportunity to create this wonderful, gritty universe that King made so beautiful in his books, the studio opted to try and play it safe and make the film a money-spinning, family friendly flick, which was an inherently bad decision. Attempting to modernise the realm of Mid-World and ‘Keystone’ Earth as it is called, is one of the first things that made the potential for a fantastical setting fall truly short. Undeniably, they made Mid-World look the part with location shooting, but modernising New York and refraining from capturing King’s 20th century setting was a real disappointment, and took away from what could have been. Technically speaking, the film goes from one extreme to another very quickly which feels very sloppy. The action scenes in which we see Elba’s Gunslinger shoot his way through hordes of enemies or The Man in Black’s sorcery are the only aspects of the book which really creep their way into the film, and it glimpses at what could have been unfortunately. Some of the CGI felt so cheap, such as a scene where the young boy Jake (Tom Taylor) is being chased through the rooftops of New York, there is needless CGI of him jumping down a staircase, and it begs the question of just why? Despite the small respite of good-looking settings and clever action, the opportunity to create a world that could rival Middle-Earth or the post-apocalyptic Mad Max setting was well and truly missed here; a real shame.
A blunt tale with very little backstory.
The worst and most grating element of the film had to be the direction of the story, which despite relatively good dialogue, was simply poor. Despite the cast’s best efforts, with the excellent performances by Elba and McConaughey being one of the film’s only redeeming elements, the misdirection of King’s story was beyond repair from the start. In an attempt to reach out to a wider audience, the studio focused the story on Jake’s visions and instead of making Roland the gritty, layered character that King created and Elba would have made his own, he was given an awkward father/son dynamic with Jake which didn’t suit the character at all. The Man in Black managed to retain some of his best characteristics from the book thanks to McConaughey’s charm, yet still wasn’t given enough to really develop, and the final battle between him and Roland was criminally awful which inherently favoured the classic Hollywood ending. Making Jake the centre of the story made the character wholly unlikeable and mostly annoying, and it was the studio’s attempt to hit the 12A audience that resonates with the story being so bad. Had they allowed the film to be as gritty as the books, it would have received such a better reception and more people would have flocked to see it, as they did with Deadpool and Watchmen. The other poor element of the story was the lack of a layered backstory which is so prevalent in the books, and this is because a TV series about Roland and The Man in Black’s origins is to follow the film, where they have a serious job of clawing the franchise back to where it should be.
The Verdict
In short, The Dark Tower is a sloppy, misdirected film in its own right, but as a book adaptation, it is one of, if not the worst I’ve come across, especially as the source material is so brilliant. Despite some redeeming elements, such as Elba and McConaughey’s solid leading performances, the location shooting of Mid-World, Junkie XL’s clever score and mostly entertaining and well made action scenes; the studio interference on Arcel’s work has led to a truly disappointing feature. A perfect example of greediness getting in the way of what could have become a cult franchise that rivalled The Lord of the Rings and other such films, one can only hope they have a complete overhaul of the franchise whilst retaining Elba and McConaughey, I mean it’s a long shot but fingers crossed!
Rating: 4.5/10
Words by Elliott Jones.