Is 'The Dark Tower' Movie Any Good? Here's What The Reviews Say
The film adaptation of Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" (out Friday, August 4th) has taken many years, a handful of potential directors and a parade of screenwriters to get here. Can Nikolaj Arcel's vision of King's world(s) please newcomers and fans, or will Jake Chambers and gunslinger Roland Deschain set off in search of a franchise reboot? Here's what the reviews have to say:
The Story Follows Jake More Than It Does Roland
We're introduced early on to Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor), who has recurring nightmares of a Dark Tower crumbling, leading to the end of the world. In these dreams, he also sees Walter, the evil "Man in Black" (Matthew McConaughey), and a gunslinger named Roland (Idris Elba). After discovering Walter and his evil subordinates are after him for his psychic abilities, Jake escapes and finds himself in Roland's world. With Roland as his guide, they try to evade Walter at all costs while Roland tries to… encounter him at all costs?
While King's books begin and end with Roland Deschain, aka The Gunslinger, the film's script imagines the epic as an outsider's story that unspools through Jake's narrow perspective. It's one way to introduce such a sprawling, imaginative world — or, as is the case with "The Dark Tower," multiple worlds — and Taylor is engaging as the troubled Jake, but his wide-eyed confusion never transitions into much in the way of larger understanding, thus diminishing the scope of the story into whatever it is that Jake can digest.
If You're Not Aware, The 'Dark Tower' World Is A Pop-Culture Mish-Mash
A few of the concepts drifting through the film suggest how far ahead of the curve King was, a few play as flagrantly derivative, but when you watch "The Dark Tower" you may not bother to separate the Kingian from the Jungian from the ready-made-for-DVR-ian. It all fuses into a glittering trash pile of déjà vu action pulp.
[Variety]
In Stephen King's original conception, Roland was a mad dream of Eastwood, a six-shooter ronin on a quest to do cool stuff in freaky places. It's a credit to Elba that he gives the character some Man With No Name gruffness and genuine unwinking humor. He's got too many lines that sound like explanatory videogame voiceover — "What happens in one world goes in others," or "They sense your weakness, create illusions to distract you." Elba makes that dull content sound stylish, and he shoots people with weary precision, like a myth grown tired of his own mythology.
The Film Doesn't Lean Far Enough Into Wild West Or High Fantasy Fare
"The Man in Black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed," goes the perfect first line of King's first story. There's your cinema: Darkness, wasteland, gunslinger. You could watch that tableau for hours: It's a Sergio Leone movie in twelve words. Director Nicolaj Arcel tips his hat towards the original cinematic inspiration — a movie theater in the background promises "Spaghetti Week at the Majestic!" But The Dark Tower doesn't want to be a western, barely spends any time in the desert, barely spends time anywhere, really.
While sitting through this uniquely flavorless slog, a viewer jolts out of a waking sleep every five minutes or so to realize that they have not internalized a thing. Nikolaj Arcel's efforts to translate and condense Stephen King's long-running series of densely mythologized novels amount to being a western without the majesty of the west, a fantasy without anything even coming close to being fantastic.
Heaven knows, the books offer more invention than could fit in one feature film — reading just the first two paragraphs of Wikipedia's entry on Jake Chambers excited me more than anything Dark Tower contains — but in their effort to introduce newcomers to this world, the filmmakers make the saga's contents look not archetypal but generic and cobbled together.
Idris Elba Is A Great Choice For Roland Deschain
I can't imagine anyone else playing Roland with the same world-weariness and physical precision that Elba does; he's easily the best part of the movie, and I bet that everyone who picks up the books in the future will be picturing him as their gunslinger no matter what kind of illustrations they're looking at.
[Nerdist]
The comedy beats are familiar — it's Idris Elba doing Last Action Hero — but the actor sells the humor without betraying Roland's essential honor. We found the perfect gunslinger.
Much was made by a certain sect of Dark Tower fans over a black man playing a role that was written as white, but Elba does plenty with Roland to hopefully silence those critics once and for all. His humanity, stern demeanor, and aforementioned "man out of time" persona are big selling points for the series should it go forward.
McConaughey's Villain Is Either Bad Or So-Bad-He's-Good
Sauntering around in spiky jet-black hair, he looks like the dark brother of Siegfried and Roy crossed with the world's most lean-and-mean Elvis impersonator. Yet what makes the Man in Black nifty-campy-scary is the ominous nonchalance with which McConaughey imposes his power, commanding people to kill themselves on a whim ("Stop breathing!" he snaps at Jake's icky stepfather, and the dude does, and dies). McConaughey makes the Man in Black a neatly purposeful demon, a roving executioner with style.
[Variety]
As McConaughey swans through scene after ridiculous scene, it's almost as if he is deliberately aiming for a Razzie Award to go with his Oscar. Imagine RuPaul playing Clint Eastwood and you will get an idea of the mixed messages of his work here, which suggests both fatigue and a brand of steely camp that is entirely his own.
[The Wrap]
The Movie Suffers From Early 'Potter' Adaptation Woes
Many adaptations that are slavishly faithful to their source material turn out less-than satisfactory (Chamber of Secrets, Watchmen, etc.). The problem is that Akiva Goldsman, the worst living major-studio screenwriter (Batman & Robin, A Winter's Tale), piles in way too much information for so short a runtime (95 minutes including credits). Bringing the action of future Dark Tower novels forward isn't a sin. The sin is not having nearly enough space for it. The film is breathless in all the worst ways as a result.
An optimist would say that the Harry Potter movies survived a couple of stiff opening chapters to hit their stride midway through. But that series relied on the loyalty of a different sort of fan. Older and wiser, longtime Stephen King readers know how much Hollywood wants their attention. If they shrug their shoulders at this Dark Tower, a better one might come along before you can say "reboot."
It's Not All Bad… But That's Not Saying Much
"The Dark Tower" works as a film because it's not trying to be a multiverse — and because, in its forgettable derivative ballistic way, it packs in just enough of the King vision to remind you that everything old can be new again, especially if it wasn't all that novel the first time.
[Variety]
In the end, you can't feel too unkindly toward the picture […] the action climax, showcasing some simple but proficient special effects, does't grind you down the way so many of today's blockbuster battles do.
[TIME]
There is one scene in this movie that is actually, totally, no-qualifications-necessary wonderful, involving Roland's visit to a world he doesn't understand – "Keystone Earth," aka our reality. It's so sweet and enjoyable that it makes me wish The Dark Tower had scrapped all that end-of-the-world stuff entirely and instead just been a fish-out-of-water buddy comedy about a troubled young kid and his gruff friend from another world.
[Mashable]
'Tower Junkiers Might Just Want To Stay Away
Idris Elba and Tom Taylor have a wonderful dynamic together, and the gunslinging action scenes are appropriately cool. But it all feels strangely… conventional, somehow. Considering that the series is so beloved precisely for its indescribably epic qualities, that might be a kiss of death for some fans.
[Nerdist]
I've been told that The Dark Tower books are jam-packed with dense plot, wonderful characters, and a sprawling mythology — which is what made the movie so hard to make for all these years. Well, the solution seems to have been to just scrap all that and release a shockingly short 95-minute movie that just kind of glosses over everything to the point that has any meaning or purpose.
[UPROXX]
Fans of King's books will likely be disappointed by the way this long-awaited film adaptation speeds through essential plot points and frantically introduces characters with little in the way of rhythm or care, all in service of a rushed finale that will leave plenty scratching their heads.
TL;DR
The Dark Tower should still add up to more: It could use more magic, more dread, a more staggering sense of wonder. It's wholly inoffensive, but it's unmemorable too. This is a fantasy that runs like a business.
[TIME]
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