Conrad, did you see Dark Tower yet? I read that fans of the book were disappointed but others whom have never read the book thought the movie was great! Based on a recommendation from a friend that falls into the later category, I'll probably go see it next weekend.
Not yet but my wife and I plan on going out sometime within the next couple of weeks to see it. She's reading Eyes of The Dragon now and wants to read the series. I've been trying to get her to read the series for years. Now that the movie is out she's finally reading it. I hope that the movie doesn't change her plans...
Please let me know what you thought of the flick.
Upon further review(s)...
I've read some of the reviews for The Dark Tower and to say that I'm disappointed would be an understatement.
WTF?
The Dark Tower movies were originally intended to be a series of flix based on 8 books that King wrote. It seems that this was scrapped and the entire Dark Tower universe was packed into one movie! The story is MUCH too large for just one movie treatment.
See this review posted on IMDB
Bad beyond your wildest imagination
Author: Kane Gao 8/5/2017
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
"Being a tower junkie for over a decade, I honestly don't have much expectation on this movie adaption. Much of The Dark Tower series' charm comes from Stephen King's narration, which doesn't easily convert into the visual language of movies. Since the bar was set extremely low, I thought there's no way I could be disappointed in the cinema.
But dude, this Nikolaj Arcel guy has one heck of a way to prove me wrong.
Judging by what's revealed in trailers, I thought this one should cover The Gungslinger and *part of* Drawing of the Three, starting a whole franchise, with more installments to follow. But no. The director took pieces from all seven Tower books, glued them onto a self-made storyline (a lame one), and called it a day. Yes, you're reading it right. This is the whole thing, the entire package.
What kind of idiotic mind ever thinks of packing SEVEN novels into ONE SINGLE movie?Within 1.5 hours you will see Roland Deschain fighting the army of the Man in Black (vol IV), having his ass handed to him, embarking on a chase (vol I), picking up Jake Chambers from New York (vol I & II), although the Jake in this movie is really Jake Chambers and Patrick Danville rolled into one (vol VII). They fooled around in Mid-world for a bit, then discovered Algul Siento (vol VI), where the Man in Black's force are hording up breakers to destroy the Dark Tower. In order the thwart the evil operation, they went to this village that looks suspiciously like Calla Bryan Sturgis (vol V), activated a portal to Keystone Earth, trying to infiltrate en route the can-toi headquarter, a restaurant called Dixie Pig (vol VII). Then there comes a ton of pew pew pew and bang bang bang. All baddies died, including the Man in Black (vol WTF). They destroyed the tower-breaking machine, and lived happily ever after (vol WTF). End of story.
No Oy. No Eddie Dean. No Susannah Holmes. Even the Crimson King is axed, while references to him can be seen everywhere in the movie. This version of Roland didn't even attempt to enter the Tower.
I've thought hard, for nice things to say about this movie, and came up with only the following:
1. All sorts of creative reloading techniques.
2. Walter O'Dim is super duper kickass cool in the movie adaption, way cooler than in the original novels. Matthew McConaughey did portray the "Walking Dude" true to his name, always on the move, casually passing through lives and worlds, leaving havoc in his wake.
Otherwise... it's a dozen bucks wasted. Should have donated it to the charity.
BTW, IMDb should change its rating mechanism a bit, allowing us to give a 0 rate.
Oh, there's one nice touch at the very beginning of the movie. Among the names and logos of producers and investors, there's a screen featuring "Tet Corporation", accompanied by a turtle and a rose, kindling false hope in me. "
Looks like I'll be waiting for this poor SK screen adaptation (how many now?) to come out on disc. Crap!
And now I see how they could cast a black man as Roland. When I first heard this I thought, No way! How's that going to work? If you read the series you'd know about Susannah Holmes/Detta Walker. She's a black woman and has a HUGE part in the series and the interaction between the white Roland (in the books) and her was an important part of the storyline. Well it seems that she was written out of the movie, along with other MAJOR characters. And no Oy, the Billy Bumbler? Boo!!!