The latest of Stephen King's writings have taken to the big screen in The Dark Tower! This sweeping epic tale which spans the course of 8 books has been said to be too difficult to transfer to the silver screen, but Hollywood has given it a shot none the less and we were actually pretty pleased with the final product. Now before we get too deep into this please let me start by saying I have not read the books, so I am not weighing in on how close they are to the film, but just as someone who is entering this world for the first time. So let's break this down.
The film centers around a young man named Jake (Tom Taylor) who keeps having these crazy dreams about a far away land, a dark tower, mysterious gunslinger, and a scary man in black. What he doesn't realize is that his dreams are more than just dreams, they are psychic visions of both things that are happening now in other worlds and things that are yet to come. The Dark Tower itself is the center of our universe and as long as it stands it keeps all our worlds (yes, worlds) safe from the demons/darkness that is forever trying to invade us. A league of people known as gunslingers is deemed its protector. The last of these gunslingers is Roland Deschain (Idris Elba). Roland is losing hope in the fight as he continues to battle a tireless foe hell bent on bringing down the tower and spreading evil through the land, The man In Black (Matthew McConaughey). Cool concept right? It is. Trust me. As the darkness slowly creeps towards its victory of bringing down the tower, Jake and the other universes collide and the race to see if good or evil will prevail is on like Donkey Kong.
So I am well aware that there are a lot of people complaining about this film already before even stepping foot in the theater. Many are claiming that the film changes much of the story, but for a book that is supposedly so hard to adapt to the screen, doesn't that mean they will have to make a few changes to make this whole story work and make it believable? I for one really enjoyed the hell out of this film. I thought it was fun, the action was entertaining. Something about McConaughey just brings coolness to every character he plays, even evil ones just like this. Idris, don't even get me started on Idris. I loved this guy. I could watch him reload his gun for hours. it was just cool to see. The film is packed full of great visual and it was a really fun action film to watch. I can only hope that the movie does well so that we get a chance to adapt the rest of this series.
Overall, I would say if you haven't read the books you will probably enjoy this film. it was a solid action flick with a steadily moving plot, fun characters, and some pretty good fight scenes. It was just plain fun and easily your best for the box office new releases this weekend. We scored The Dark Tower with a B+.
Checking it out in theaters everywhere August 4th.