The Dark Tower

It's a mystery to me why they didn't do a better job with this. The premise calls for mature serious fantasy by Peter Jackson, not just a maturely told children's tale where everything is too simply outlined and resolved. I certainly wouldn't call it a dud – for that the film is under control directorially and there are a number of nicely and stylishly edited scenes; but it should have taken a different, darker and more varied route. Elba is a proper good guy, McConaughey as the bad guy the best thing about the whole film. I want an expensive and similarly cast TV series. (2018-02-06)

It wasn’t as terrible as all the negative, almost hysterical responses had made me fear. Overall, it’s rather ordinary, unambitious and unremarkable. The casting is good, even the main boy, who didn’t annoy me, which in this kind of role it’s always a success. The special effects are pretty lame, most of the scenes are covered in darkness (for instance, the fight with the demon in the woods, that one was so dark that I thought the projector had broken down), and the entire film feels terribly rushed, like a fragment of a bigger whole. This is perhaps understandable, given the length of the book it’s based on, but, as a viewer who hasn’t read it, I’d appreciate the adaptation not making it so awfully clear. I don’t see the reason to make much of a fuss, but rather to sigh over the unfulfilled potential. (2017-08-24)

I never thought an hour and a half could drag on like this. The Dark Tower has its moments, both Matthew McConaughey and Idris Elba fit their roles excellently and Nikolaj Arcel is confident in the action scenes, but unfortunately it's all pretty banal, ordinary and boring. Plot-wise, The Dark Tower never surprises with anything, which doesn't matter when it pretends to be an action B-movie. Unfortunately, however, it more often than not tries to pretend it's a grand fantasy full of fascinating worlds, other dimensions, terrifying monsters and mysterious creatures. And given that the ventures outside our reality end up in a desert with one theme park, one village, and a few completely uninteresting side characters, it comes across as a bit funny. The Dark Tower looks like a pilot for a more ambitious fantasy series that would like to show its world to viewers in the episodes and seasons to come. Unfortunately, it shows so little the first time around that I have no desire to be there the next time (though there probably won't be a next time anyway). It's not a disaster, but there really isn't much of the downright interesting stuff to send you to the cinema for. (2018-07-27)

If Stephen King fans go to see the film expecting an adaptation of his favorite book series, they will be exposed to an outright hellish experience. The Dark Tower, however, is not an adaptation, but rather an alternative variation on the first part of King's opus, which its creators also try to pass off as a kind of canonical continuation of these books (and yeah, it makes sense, but it's just something substantially different than most people were hoping for). The film evokes the feeling that this is an incoherent concoction of the motifs adopted from the books, entwined in a hasty and extremely condensed shapeless form, which seems terribly abbreviated and incomprehensible, and which most of all resembles various recent adaptations of fantasy novels for teenagers from The Giver to The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones. Although The Dark Tower is not worse than these films, given the quality, meaning and scope of King's masterpiece, this devaluation is truly terrible. (2017-08-25)

Not great, not terrible, rather an average film that only very theoretically could have been better. I didn't expect that The Dark Tower could be filmed better than in an average way. For those unfamiliar with the book (or in this case rather “drafts") will probably be more conciliatory. Connoisseurs may like the introduction with Jake, and then various allusions to Mid-World (talking raccoons in a commercial, Walter's Glass Balls, 19-19...) and to King's other works (The Shining, It, Christine, The Shawshank Redemption, 1408, Salem's Lot...); however, the film won't offer them much more than that. Perhaps just the surprise that, God knows why, the screenwriters changed the function of the Tower or the Rays. Idris Elba is almost uninteresting as Roland and has almost no motivation, the actor playing Jake is also bland, and Matthew McConaughey plays Walter like Al Pacino in The Devil's Advocate, but the directing or the script do not help him too much, the spark of atmosphere only shines every now and then, and there no fear emanating from it. The final battle wants to be flashy, but is instead rather awkward. I'm not offended, but if the film hadn't been made, it would not have mattered. (2017-08-24)