The Dark Tower (Dir. Nikolaj Arcel, 1h 35m)
For an author with a bibliography of over 50 books and 200 short stories, it is no surprise that Stephen King's works have received a great number of adaptions, from the sublime (The Shining, although King notoriously dislikes Kubrick's adaption, and Carrie (twice), to the ridiculous, odd or downright funny (too many to count although Dreamcatcher and Maximum Overdrive, directed by a coked-out-of-his-mind King himself are two of the more entertaining. That's the major thing that unites most of these films (yes, even the cheesy trope-bingo miniseries that make up the backbone of adaptions of King's work)-they're entertaining.
They're fun, even if they do show up a reliance on Maine, bad parents, alcoholism, and all of King's other well-thumbed archetypes. The problem thus with the latest adaption, that of King's Fantasy-Western series, The Dark Tower, is two-fold-firstly, it's not very fun, it creaks at the seams, and with 4,250 pages worth of material to adapt, not to mention dozens of allusions to King's other works, this films barely fits together, let alone tells a coherent story.
They're fun, even if they do show up a reliance on Maine, bad parents, alcoholism, and all of King's other well-thumbed archetypes. The problem thus with the latest adaption, that of King's Fantasy-Western series, The Dark Tower, is two-fold-firstly, it's not very fun, it creaks at the seams, and with 4,250 pages worth of material to adapt, not to mention dozens of allusions to King's other works, this films barely fits together, let alone tells a coherent story.
The problem begins and end with the way that the story itself is told; gone is King's metaphysical Western, full of its mythologising of the white and black hat, of the heroic Gunslinger who wishes to find and climb the legendary Dark Tower, and the Man In Black, who represents forces trying to destroy it, and their never-ending struggle to find or destroy the Dark Tower. In its place, seemingly, is a seething mass of every bad Stephen King trope around, in the form of Jake Chambers-whilst Chambers is a character in King's magnum opus, here he's essentially a macguffin for The Man In Black (Matthew McConaughey, in a role which at least he seems to be enjoying) and Roland Deschain (Idris Elba, who barely moves out of grumbling mode) to fight over.
Chambers for his part is a likable retread of King's child characters, from Danny Torrance, whose psychic powers (his Shine, as the film puts it) makes him a target for the powers of darkness, to the troubled children of It. However, in many sections, his back and forth dialogue with Elba seems to be either to feed him lines, or to engage in witty banter about "Keystone Earth".
What, however, particularly cripples this film is its pacing. It, in short, doesn't have any-one could easily, as the film zips between its messy, cluttered and often gloomy action scenes, have interposed those old-time inter title cards to trim the film down to a neat hour or so, such is the bare-bones nature for the plot. One could easily have, in short, adapted the first novel, "The Gunslinger", and left it at that-this film...is just a bizarre hodgepodge of a sequel and a straight adaption of the first book with some other ideas thrown in. Even when the film plays King shoutout bingo, it fails to be overly interesting.
The worst thing about this film, however, is the action and the way its filmed-at one point, Roland and Jake make their way through an abandoned fairground, and are then ambushed by a creature from beyond the universe-the screen at this point was so dark, so murky, and so difficult to see what was going on that I could quite happily have closed my eyes and just imagined what was happening. Even in the middle of the final setpiece, there is so much going on at once, and the framing of shots is so bad that one can't see, and one ceases to care what is going on, even at the film's denouement. The worst thing is, however that this film is a scant hour and a half long, as though no-one, from director down, had the confidence to make this any longer or any more complex-this is a series better adapted as a series, either on television or on the big screen, and to see it, after forty plus years of development come to the big screen like this is frankly dismaying.
Chambers for his part is a likable retread of King's child characters, from Danny Torrance, whose psychic powers (his Shine, as the film puts it) makes him a target for the powers of darkness, to the troubled children of It. However, in many sections, his back and forth dialogue with Elba seems to be either to feed him lines, or to engage in witty banter about "Keystone Earth".
What, however, particularly cripples this film is its pacing. It, in short, doesn't have any-one could easily, as the film zips between its messy, cluttered and often gloomy action scenes, have interposed those old-time inter title cards to trim the film down to a neat hour or so, such is the bare-bones nature for the plot. One could easily have, in short, adapted the first novel, "The Gunslinger", and left it at that-this film...is just a bizarre hodgepodge of a sequel and a straight adaption of the first book with some other ideas thrown in. Even when the film plays King shoutout bingo, it fails to be overly interesting.
The worst thing about this film, however, is the action and the way its filmed-at one point, Roland and Jake make their way through an abandoned fairground, and are then ambushed by a creature from beyond the universe-the screen at this point was so dark, so murky, and so difficult to see what was going on that I could quite happily have closed my eyes and just imagined what was happening. Even in the middle of the final setpiece, there is so much going on at once, and the framing of shots is so bad that one can't see, and one ceases to care what is going on, even at the film's denouement. The worst thing is, however that this film is a scant hour and a half long, as though no-one, from director down, had the confidence to make this any longer or any more complex-this is a series better adapted as a series, either on television or on the big screen, and to see it, after forty plus years of development come to the big screen like this is frankly dismaying.
The Dark Tower is the worst kind of bad-you can't even compare it to the hilariously over-the-top Maximum Overdriver or Children of the Corn, the terrible Langoliers or Dreamcatcher, or even the lesser known King cinematic adaptions. It's boring. This film has done the unthinkable-it's made an author whose work, even when adapted badly, is always interesting...a snorefest. Let the tower fall.
Rating: Avoid
Rating: Avoid
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