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Admit it, The Dark Tower is film's biggest letdown in years
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The new Dark Tower movie starring Idris Elba and Matthew
McConaughey is something that Stephen King fans like Maya
Prohovnik have been looking forward to for years.
Unfortunately, the movie falls far short of expectations.
"I just felt so disappointed," Prohovnik says in Episode 268
of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "I was so ready
to have that magical moment of watching The Dark Tower
happen on the big screen, and it just felt like some other
bad movie."
King's series is dark and wildly imaginative, but the film
adaptation seems designed to be as safe and familiar as
possible. "If you took every sci-fi adventure movie
starring a kid and put them in a blender, and blended it up
and poured it out into a cup, this is what it would be,"
says Geek's Guide to the Galaxy host David Barr Kirtley.
"It's the most average movie of this type I've ever seen."
Fantasy author Rajan Khanna is a big fan of the novels'
Weird West elements, and was disappointed that those
elements barely made it into the film. "I think they were
afraid to go into that post-apocalyptic Western mode," he
says. "But if they'd done it with care - and drawn from the
source material - people would have responded to it."
Science fiction editor John Joseph Adams also hated the
movie, but he's a big enough fan of the books that he's
willing to give the upcoming TV series one last shot.
"I have zero expectations," he says. "But I'd watch the
first episode. Grudgingly."
Listen to our complete interview with Maya Prohovnik,
Rajan Khanna, and John Joseph Adams in Episode 268 of
Geek's Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some
highlights from the discussion below.
Rajan Khanna on characterization:
"There's no character development for anyone. Even if you
can admit that Jake could be the main character of this
movie, we get introduced to him, and I felt like I didn't
have any idea who this kid was. ... There's nothing about
Jake in the beginning that makes him likeable at all, or
interesting - except for his dreams. I feel like it's all
plot devices throughout. There's nothing about Roland that
seems compelling. Unlike in the books, he's not interested
in The Dark Tower at all, he doesn't even want to go there,
he's out for revenge. And why does the Man in Black want to
destroy The Dark Tower? Why does he just like screwing with
people? Sure, he's like the devil, he's a force of evil.
But there's nothing to any of these characters that makes
them interesting to me."
David Barr Kirtley on familiarity:
"A lot of the commentary I've seen has said you wouldn't be
able to understand this if you haven't read the books, but
I thought it was incredibly, stupidly obvious what was
happening. ... Every scene in the movie is something that
you've seen in fifty other movies before, including the one
where the character wakes up and hears his dad's voice.
It's like, 'I'm in a scary forest on another world and I
hear my dad's voice, and rather than waking up the guy next
to me and asking him what's going on, I'm just going to
wander by myself off into the woods.' There's a scene
almost exactly like this in Spaceballs, of all things, and
if you're regurgitating Spaceballs, isn't that a warning
sign to you that maybe you should rewrite your scenes?"
John Joseph Adams on representation:
"I think we all agree that Idris Elba was great, and I've
seen some commentary about how diverse the movie is in
general, which I did appreciate. ... But I fear that
Hollywood will take the wrong lessons from this. There's
this critical failure, and they're going to blame it on
that - much in the way we've seen in other industries. You
see Marvel struggling with sales, and you hear this
commentary from insiders saying 'people don't want
diversity in their comics, and that must be why we have
declining sales.' I just feel like Hollywood always learns
the wrong lessons from failures, and I'm afraid that that's
the lesson they're going to learn from this, even though it
doesn't have anything to do with why the movie's terrible."
Maya Prohovnik on the Dark Tower books:
"You can find news articles that are referenced in the books
that actually exist, so it's this really cool real world
crossover, and I started looking up all the places that it
mentioned in the books in New York City, and I found the
Hammarskjöld Plaza, which actually exists. ... It's right
across from the building where my parents got married, and I
was like, 'Whoa.' It's such a stretch, but just the fact that
the real world was written into the books, and then that I
had some tiny connection to it - you know, it was right after I
read the books, and I was all emotional, and I think that
happens for a lot of people when they read it, because
Keystone Earth is our Earth, there's all these opportunities
to feel like you're really part of the story."
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https://www.wired.com/2017/08/geeks-guide-the-dark-tower>
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