The Dark Tower...when movies stray
Aug. 8th, 2017 04:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ziparumpazooSo I went to see The Dark Tower on the weekend. Having been burnt by pretty much all the movie adaptations of Stephen King novels, the only expectation I had going in was that Idris Elba would be awesome.
Fanboy arguments to the contrary, the only reason that Idris Elba shouldn't play Roland is because he has an excess of fingers, once you get past the first book in the series.
Fortunately, writers Akiva Goldsman and Jeff Pinkner (Fringe) have realized that what goes on inside the characters and makes for a good novel does not necessarily translate well on to screen, and Roland's eventual missing fingers are not an issue. Elba has the presence required to play Roland, the worn experience that makes Roland who he is.
The other major issue of translating TDT to screen is that there are seven books (plus a novella) and some 1,334,631* words to the story. That's a huge risk to expect moviegoers to bank on Lord of the Rings-style faithfulness to the text. Not to mention either cutting the level of violence and gore to get a more general audience rating, or risk limiting your audience with an R rating appropriate for the books.
Veterans of the many-worlds/father-son relationship scenarios, Goldsman and Pinkner opted to go a different route altogether, taking elements of the story as a whole, but focusing on the meeting and relationship between Roland and Jake as they try to stop Walter and his team of Breakers from bringing down the Dark Tower, and by proxy, New York City. The majority of the story is told from Jake's point of view, drawing in elements like the house in Dutch Hill, the Dixie Pig, his loosening grip on his sanity as he dreams of Midworld...however a lot of the mythology is pared down in favor of 93 minutes of screen time - Roland's history with Walter, the Beams, most of the magic supplanted with a quick and dirty explanation that the tower is there to protects the joined worlds and keep the evil out. The chronology is wrong. This makes the story feel a little flat and geared toward younger family-friendly audience. There are none of the horrors of a world that has moved on. It also makes the story feel distantly familiar, as if reading a beloved book, only this copy is from the Red!verse and the story as you remember uncomfortably not quite right.
Director Nikolaj Arcel has said that "fans will know the film is a sequel to the books' events", but that could have been made a hell of a lot clearer to this fan. A single shot of Roland open the door in the tower with the horn of Eld and restarting the cycle would have made the difference between being an okay movie that doesn't seem to know where it fits in the chronology, and the true start of a franchise aiming to be the next step in the series. It works, but with years of rumors and expectations surrounding this movie, I'd expected more on the mythology side. In the condensed timeline, I missed Susannah and Eddie Dean (and Oy!)
That said, I'd probably still happily pay my $13.50 watch Roland shoot his way through the Dixie Pig on his way back to Midworld.
*according to Wikipedia
Fanboy arguments to the contrary, the only reason that Idris Elba shouldn't play Roland is because he has an excess of fingers, once you get past the first book in the series.
Fortunately, writers Akiva Goldsman and Jeff Pinkner (Fringe) have realized that what goes on inside the characters and makes for a good novel does not necessarily translate well on to screen, and Roland's eventual missing fingers are not an issue. Elba has the presence required to play Roland, the worn experience that makes Roland who he is.
The other major issue of translating TDT to screen is that there are seven books (plus a novella) and some 1,334,631* words to the story. That's a huge risk to expect moviegoers to bank on Lord of the Rings-style faithfulness to the text. Not to mention either cutting the level of violence and gore to get a more general audience rating, or risk limiting your audience with an R rating appropriate for the books.
Veterans of the many-worlds/father-son relationship scenarios, Goldsman and Pinkner opted to go a different route altogether, taking elements of the story as a whole, but focusing on the meeting and relationship between Roland and Jake as they try to stop Walter and his team of Breakers from bringing down the Dark Tower, and by proxy, New York City. The majority of the story is told from Jake's point of view, drawing in elements like the house in Dutch Hill, the Dixie Pig, his loosening grip on his sanity as he dreams of Midworld...however a lot of the mythology is pared down in favor of 93 minutes of screen time - Roland's history with Walter, the Beams, most of the magic supplanted with a quick and dirty explanation that the tower is there to protects the joined worlds and keep the evil out. The chronology is wrong. This makes the story feel a little flat and geared toward younger family-friendly audience. There are none of the horrors of a world that has moved on. It also makes the story feel distantly familiar, as if reading a beloved book, only this copy is from the Red!verse and the story as you remember uncomfortably not quite right.
Director Nikolaj Arcel has said that "fans will know the film is a sequel to the books' events", but that could have been made a hell of a lot clearer to this fan. A single shot of Roland open the door in the tower with the horn of Eld and restarting the cycle would have made the difference between being an okay movie that doesn't seem to know where it fits in the chronology, and the true start of a franchise aiming to be the next step in the series. It works, but with years of rumors and expectations surrounding this movie, I'd expected more on the mythology side. In the condensed timeline, I missed Susannah and Eddie Dean (and Oy!)
That said, I'd probably still happily pay my $13.50 watch Roland shoot his way through the Dixie Pig on his way back to Midworld.
*according to Wikipedia
