{"id":867,"date":"2017-08-06T15:54:55","date_gmt":"2017-08-06T22:54:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/?p=867"},"modified":"2017-08-06T15:54:55","modified_gmt":"2017-08-06T22:54:55","slug":"i-enjoyed-the-dark-tower-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/?p=867","title":{"rendered":"I Enjoyed the Dark Tower Movie"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everywhere I look, I see people bashing the Dark Tower movie. \u00a0Very few people are actually defending it. \u00a0So, I’m going to talk about it, and I’m going to go deep into spoiler territory, for both the movie and the books.<\/p>\n

I repeat, this post will contain spoilers for both the movies and the books. \u00a0If you haven’t read the books and you intend to, don’t read this post. \u00a0If you haven’t seen the movie and you don’t like spoilers, look away, my friend. \u00a0Because we’re going to get into it.<\/p>\n

Okay? \u00a0Okay. \u00a0Let’s start with the books.<\/p>\n

The books start with one of the best opening lines: The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.<\/p>\n

This is a great opening because it gives us our protagonist, our antagonist, and our setting in one line. \u00a0Roland, The Man in Black, and the desert, which really is Roland’s world. \u00a0A world that has moved on. \u00a0A world that looks like it might once have been like our world. \u00a0But different.<\/p>\n

In the first book, Roland knows he is a gunslinger. \u00a0He is resolute. \u00a0He is duty bound to a fault. \u00a0He is willing to let a boy fall to his death in order to achieve his goal. \u00a0Ultimately, his goal is to get to The Dark Tower. \u00a0The Man in Black is just a stepping stone to achieve that goal.<\/p>\n

Continuing on with the books, Roland draws his companions to him. \u00a0We learn about what it means to be a gunslinger. \u00a0We learn about those that traveled with him in the past, and how they fell along the way. \u00a0We see, right up to the very end, that Roland’s curse is to follow his duty, and in the pursuit of that duty, walk across the backs of the beloved dead in order to reach his goal.<\/p>\n

At the end of the books, he pretty much does that. \u00a0Jake and Eddie are dead and gone. \u00a0Susanna leaves him. \u00a0He’s lost everyone, but he perseveres until the Crimson King is defeated and he enters The Dark Tower. \u00a0He goes up each level, seeing his life. \u00a0At the last level of the tower, there is one more door. \u00a0He goes through it, and what happens?<\/p>\n

The man in black flees across the desert, and the gunslinger follows. \u00a0He’s back to where we saw him at the beginning of the quest. \u00a0The cycle starts again, but there is hope that Roland has learned something. \u00a0That this time around, it will be a little bit different.<\/p>\n

The Dark Tower series contains multiple endings. \u00a0Roland starting the cycle over again is one of them. \u00a0Another ending involves Susanna. \u00a0She is in another world, much like our own, but a little bit different. \u00a0She finds Eddie there. \u00a0This Eddie is much like the one she’d lost, but this one is alive, clean and sober. \u00a0And Jake is there, too. \u00a0Jake and Eddie are brothers, and they are both happy and alive. \u00a0They’re the same people we’ve loved through the series. \u00a0Just a little bit different.<\/p>\n

I’ve spent a bunch of time talking about (and spoiling) the books, but before I go on to the movie, let me talk about one other minor point. \u00a0In the books, Roland laments that he should have taken just a few seconds longer at one battle, and picked up The Horn of Eld when his companion Cuthbert had died. \u00a0In his visions of approaching the tower, he saw himself standing on a hill, surrounded by roses. \u00a0He blows the horn before going to the tower.<\/p>\n

When the cycle is restarted, a hint that things are different is that he has the horn. \u00a0Roland has grown and changed. \u00a0And if he has changed, then maybe the next time around will be different. \u00a0Maybe Eddie and Jake won’t have to die.<\/p>\n

Now let’s talk about the movie.<\/p>\n

The movie does not start with the gunslinger in the desert. \u00a0It starts with Jake having a vision of Roland’s world, and how Walter, the Man in Black, is using gifted children to attack the tower.<\/p>\n

The movie focuses on Jake at the beginning, because when we get to Roland, he is a different man. \u00a0He’s broken in a fundamental way. \u00a0The deaths of his companions weigh on him. \u00a0He is no longer trying to get to The Dark Tower. \u00a0He just wants to kill the one responsible for the death of the ones he loved.<\/p>\n

Right away, we can see that this is a different story than the one in the books. \u00a0Both Jake and Roland are similar to what we saw in the books, but they’re different. \u00a0In the books, Jake grew up in 80’s, and he had to die in order to get to Roland’s world. \u00a0In the movie, he’s in our present day, and he finds his own way to Roland’s world.<\/p>\n

The characters are familiar, but a little bit different. \u00a0Does that sound familiar?<\/p>\n

The movie is not trying to retell the story from the book. \u00a0It’s not an adaptation. \u00a0It’s an extension. \u00a0It’s a new chapter.<\/p>\n

The movie even addresses this with one, subtle clue. \u00a0The Horn of Eld. \u00a0Roland doesn’t ever mention it in the movie, and no one remarks on it. \u00a0But look at this picture:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Nestled into that bag with all of that ammo is The Horn of Eld. \u00a0In this movie, Roland stopped when his good friend Cuthbert fell at the Jericho Hill. \u00a0He stopped, mourned the loss, and took up the horn. \u00a0In the movie world, if Roland reaches The Dark Tower, he won’t have the same regrets as the Roland from the books.<\/p>\n

And yet, the movie is getting bad reviews.<\/p>\n

Obviously, I went into it with a bunch of knowledge. \u00a0The lore from the books enriched my movie experience, and excited me every time I saw a nod to the story I already knew.<\/p>\n

What about people that haven’t read the books? \u00a0Well, Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey gave outstanding performances. \u00a0The set pieces were detailed. \u00a0The action was great. \u00a0Tom Taylor as Jake did fine. \u00a0The story was fine. \u00a0And at only 95 minutes, it didn’t drag on too long. \u00a0I didn’t notice any pacing issues.<\/p>\n

So what gives?<\/p>\n

Here is my theory. \u00a0I think the first reviews came from people that wanted to see the story from the books on the big screen. \u00a0People that wanted to see the Roland they enjoyed and adventured with for thousands of pages. \u00a0People that loved Eddie and Jake and Susanna, and were looking forward to The Drawing of the Three. \u00a0People that might have forgotten the ending of the series, or maybe put the endings out of their mind, because Stephen King isn’t known for great endings. \u00a0Besides, he wrote himself into the last books. \u00a0How corny is that? \u00a0Who would want to remember how The Dark Tower ended?<\/p>\n

Since the story in the movies is so different than the books, it did not meet expectations. \u00a0Therefore, the movie is bad.<\/p>\n

Let’s face it. \u00a0Some people on the internet started shitting on the movie as soon as they found out that Idris Elbas was cast as Roland. \u00a0In the books, Roland is described as looking like Clint Eastwood. \u00a0A thin, hard-case. \u00a0Idris Elba is not particular thin, and he really doesn’t look like Clint Eastwood.<\/p>\n

After the first few bad reviews, Group Think took over, and now everyone is saying it’s terrible.<\/p>\n

Obviously, I disagree with the bad reviews. \u00a0I enjoyed it. \u00a0I’m glad I saw it in the theater. \u00a0When it hits DVD, I’ll buy it and watch it again. \u00a0I’m sure I will see even more details that I missed on first viewing.<\/p>\n

The bad reviews tell me that we don’t want new stories. \u00a0We want the ones we know regurgitated back on the screen.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure what I’m going to do with that knowledge as I try to write new stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everywhere I look, I see people bashing the Dark Tower movie. \u00a0Very few people are actually defending it. \u00a0So, I’m going to talk about it, and I’m going to go deep into spoiler territory, for both the movie and the books. I repeat, this post will contain spoilers for both the movies and the books. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=867"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":869,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867\/revisions\/869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}