The Dark Tower

This movie has an incredible capacity for unwatchability. Everything in it is so colorless and dry that connecting to it is a superhuman task even for Shaolin masters of empathy who eat Lasse Hallström marathons for breakfast. Until the last action scene, there is not a single shot more interestingly constructed, character presented, or piece of information spoken. Nor is the eventual madness monumental enough to snap you out of an unpleasant apathy, comparable only to being handcuffed somewhere while someone tries to beat you for hours with the plastic hammer from the Little Builder set. In the end, it pokes the little horns of videogame action, where the fight with the Man in Black in particular is reminiscent of boss fights in videogames, aided in particular by frequent over-the-shoulder shots and a small operating space where the hero can only hide behind columns to dodge the increasing attacks of his opponent, using the interactive environment as the key to defeating him. Still, I can’t help but ask: is that enough? Whatever. Enough is just a word. (2017-11-17)

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)

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)

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)