The film adaptation of the epic saga of Stephen King is debut and farewell.
If it were not for the multiple references to his greatest literary works, it would be extremely difficult to accept that The Dark Tower is a product of Stephen King's imagination. In its turbulent transition between the page and the big screen - the project has been trying to take off for about a decade - the film appears to have been excised from every element that could have made it stand out. What is releasing today is the skeleton.
The film adaptation comes to theaters 35 years after the publication of the first of eight novels that span multiple genres and intersect in the other emblematic stories of the famous American author. In them presents an epic adventure developed between the Earth and parallel worlds, but in short, it is just another account of the eternal struggle between good and evil. "The man in black fled through the desert, and the gunslinger was after him," is the first line of The Gunslinger - the first of the books - and in King's work, perhaps he has never written a better one to boot . You feel that the entire saga dwells in it.
The image that conveys this sentence is so effective that apparently it was the only thing that remained in the minds of the filmmakers when it comes to bringing the novels to the movies. Gunman, well; Man in black, bad; Portal pa 'here, portal pa' there, bang bang bang , credits ... fin. The casting of both could not be better, that has to be given to production. The first, "Roland Deschain," is portrayed by Idris Elba as the archetypal "unnamed man" of spaghetti westerns , a role that falls to the average. Meanwhile, the second - known by many names, but in the film as, eh, "Walter" - is incarnated by Matthew McConaughey, who possesses the skills to be a tremendous villain, if the material allows.
This script, written and rewritten by four screenwriters - among them Akiva Goldsman, whose name is always a cause of great concern - does not allow him or Elba. Their respective scenic presences are the only thing that can save their roles, because otherwise, the dimension offered to their characters is nil, not to speak of the background of the old struggle between them, which is hardly suggested in passing. Its function is to represent good and evil, a gunman who defends the dark tower that serves as protection to the universe of evil forces, and a sorcerer who seeks to destroy it.
It should be noted that neither is the protagonist. This is "Jake" (Tom Taylor), a young man traumatized by the recent death of his father, who suffers from nightmares with the gunman, the man in black and the dark tower. "Jake" possesses a mental gift that would help "Walter" to tear down the tower. One plus one is two, and you'll know where the thing is going. The plot is extremely basic, taking the most generic elements of westerns, fantasy and science fiction and taping them and tapping Elmer. It does not take a special young man to bring her down. All you have to do is sneeze and the whole movie comes crashing down. Nothing has its own character. Nothing, not even the characters parallel to "Midworld", exist beyond the margins of their simplistic descriptions.
The direction of Nikolaj Arcel also does not serve as a counterbalance to all these faults. Their handling of the action lacks vision and imagination. The last "action sequence" - if you could call it that - is laughable both in its conceptualization and execution. The result is a film, not so much disastrous, but very, very mediocre, destined for immediate oblivion and to end the illusions of millions of novelists who have been waiting for years for a worthy film adaptation. For these, their only refuge may be to count how many times references to other Stephen King books are made. I counted six.
If it were not for the multiple references to his greatest literary works, it would be extremely difficult to accept that The Dark Tower is a product of Stephen King's imagination. In its turbulent transition between the page and the big screen - the project has been trying to take off for about a decade - the film appears to have been excised from every element that could have made it stand out. What is releasing today is the skeleton.
The film adaptation comes to theaters 35 years after the publication of the first of eight novels that span multiple genres and intersect in the other emblematic stories of the famous American author. In them presents an epic adventure developed between the Earth and parallel worlds, but in short, it is just another account of the eternal struggle between good and evil. "The man in black fled through the desert, and the gunslinger was after him," is the first line of The Gunslinger - the first of the books - and in King's work, perhaps he has never written a better one to boot . You feel that the entire saga dwells in it.
The image that conveys this sentence is so effective that apparently it was the only thing that remained in the minds of the filmmakers when it comes to bringing the novels to the movies. Gunman, well; Man in black, bad; Portal pa 'here, portal pa' there, bang bang bang , credits ... fin. The casting of both could not be better, that has to be given to production. The first, "Roland Deschain," is portrayed by Idris Elba as the archetypal "unnamed man" of spaghetti westerns , a role that falls to the average. Meanwhile, the second - known by many names, but in the film as, eh, "Walter" - is incarnated by Matthew McConaughey, who possesses the skills to be a tremendous villain, if the material allows.
This script, written and rewritten by four screenwriters - among them Akiva Goldsman, whose name is always a cause of great concern - does not allow him or Elba. Their respective scenic presences are the only thing that can save their roles, because otherwise, the dimension offered to their characters is nil, not to speak of the background of the old struggle between them, which is hardly suggested in passing. Its function is to represent good and evil, a gunman who defends the dark tower that serves as protection to the universe of evil forces, and a sorcerer who seeks to destroy it.
It should be noted that neither is the protagonist. This is "Jake" (Tom Taylor), a young man traumatized by the recent death of his father, who suffers from nightmares with the gunman, the man in black and the dark tower. "Jake" possesses a mental gift that would help "Walter" to tear down the tower. One plus one is two, and you'll know where the thing is going. The plot is extremely basic, taking the most generic elements of westerns, fantasy and science fiction and taping them and tapping Elmer. It does not take a special young man to bring her down. All you have to do is sneeze and the whole movie comes crashing down. Nothing has its own character. Nothing, not even the characters parallel to "Midworld", exist beyond the margins of their simplistic descriptions.
The direction of Nikolaj Arcel also does not serve as a counterbalance to all these faults. Their handling of the action lacks vision and imagination. The last "action sequence" - if you could call it that - is laughable both in its conceptualization and execution. The result is a film, not so much disastrous, but very, very mediocre, destined for immediate oblivion and to end the illusions of millions of novelists who have been waiting for years for a worthy film adaptation. For these, their only refuge may be to count how many times references to other Stephen King books are made. I counted six.