Every scene, it seems, begins five minutes too late and ends five minutes too soon. No matter how far along you’re in it, it always leaves you with that nagging feeling that you arrived 15 minutes too late to the theatre. It is an abstract monolith, a metaphor that could mean anything from finding God to finding the purpose of life.īut all of these themes are lost in this movie. And then, there is the shadowy tower that looms over everything. Both Jake and Roland, the Gunslinger, have lost their fathers, a thematic connection that the movie tries to highlight rather feebly. It is a story about fathers and sons – much hullaballoo is made about this in a mantra that the Gunslinger recites before embarking on a killing spree. There, he discovers a portal that transports him to Mid-World, where the Man in Black is hightailing it across the desert, with the Gunslinger hot on his heels.Įverything about King’s book series sounds grand – from the Tolkien-inspired world, to the Sergio Leone-inspired characters. Ignored by his mother, patronised by his psychiatrist, and chased by the Man in Black’s men, Jake flees his home in New York and finds his way to an abandoned warehouse from his dreams. Jake also sees a Gunslinger, who seeks to kill the Man in Black, as revenge for the murder of his father. In these dreams he sees a Man in Black who seeks to destroy the world by mounting an attack on a looming dark tower with an army of faceless men. Instead, we open with 11-year-old Jake Chambers, a fatherless boy who dreams of a far-off land at night. We don’t read the words on a title card and nor do we hear them being said by a wizened old lady remembering the grandmothers’ tales from her youth. “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”īut we never see either of them. So it would seem like a no-brainer to begin the film – in whichever manner – with some sort of nod towards that magnificent opening, a move which should hopefully unite novices and veteran King fans. It’s one of those bits of pop culture that has transcended its original fan-base and become something greater. But regardless of whether or not you’ve read the books, you’ve probably come across the opening sentence of The Gunslinger, the first book in the series. But after we’re done, there is a very good chance that you might actually be convinced that it’s some weird experimental movie that would feel out of place anywhere but the MoMA.īefore we begin, I must point out that I haven’t read Stephen King’s magnum opus, but have every intention to, despite this film. Identifying the problems with The Dark Tower isn’t a difficult task we’ll get down to it presently.
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