Directed by Nikolaj Arcel

Screenplay by Akiva Goldsman, Jeff Pinkner, Anders Thomas Jensen, Nikolaj Arcel

Starring Idris Elba, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Taylor, Claudia Kim

Don’t do it to yourself. Don’t do it. Don’t ever watch The Dark Tower. Your time is more valuable than nothing. I’m consistently insulted as a movie goer that grand opportunities to adapt compelling storylines consistently keep going to the exact wrong people to adapt them. And I didn’t even read the books yet, I can only imagine how livid fans of Stephen King’s series are going to be walking out of it. There is no right way to make a movie. But there is a wrong way, and this is it. Here we have a movie made by no one for no one that no one will like. Do you understand?

No

One

HOW DO YOU MAKE A MOVIE NO ONE LIKES

Somehow the incompetent fools behind this production figured out how. There is no passion to be found in this film. They hired the wrong director, the wrong writers for the screenplay, the wrong DP, the wrong editor, and all the wrong visual effects team. And fuck you Sony for no doubt making their already bad work that much worse.

This movie barely runs over 90 minutes, and yet I am to understand that it has compressed the first 3 of King’s 7? This is the opposite of The Hobbit treatment, rather than split one book into three films we now have 3 books shoved into one, with everything thrown in and yet feeling like everything was left out. King is an incredible writer, so I trust the books (the first at least) are amazing. But King’s fantastic dialogue is desecrated, robbed entirely of its potency. It felt like the filmmakers were taking the weakest line from each page of his novels, always the ones they thought would ruin things more. It feels like everything is shoved all in boring and weak and ineffective talking scenes. The tower, the war, the gunslingers, the portals, etc etc. And I still dont care what anyone is talking about.

There’s no imagination here, just a by the numbers bland production. It’s all just completely useless, it will evaporate from the minds of all who see it within a week of viewing. Matthew McConaughey looks like he could be great as the Man in Black , but his voice distracts us from any sort of legendary evil performance. The filmmakers also do everything in their power to ensure there is zero tension or excitement to be found anywhere. I’m not sure if The Man in Black is also supposed to be Randall Flagg, a recurring demon in King’s novels, but I’ll tell ya, I’m still only about 280 pages into The Stand (and have been since last August, slowest reader alive here) and the few times Flagg made an appearance in the story I was legitimately frightened. Now we have The Dark Tower movie, where Matthew McConaughey threatens Jake’s mom as he cooks chicken, and all I can think about is how much I want chicken.

The kid who plays Jake doesn’t work, although I don’t blame him. His forgettable performance was doomed like everything else. I’ve always liked Idris Elba, but the movie harms him so much. I shouldn’t feel this indifferent to a character like Rolan Deschane. Is he nothing without his guns? The film would like us to believe so, since Everytime he can’t use them he’s rendered pathetic. But let’s talk about those guns, because boy, I don’t know how you fuck up the GUNS in a movie about a GUNSLINGER. Why do they look so fake and stupid? Were they described this way in the books? I couldn’t take Idris wielding plastic prop toys seriously. For crying out loud, the pistols in Tombstone looked way cooler, and that movie came out like 23 years ago. And the bullets! Roland mentions how rare they are in his world, sure seemed that way when you were liberally blowing holes into monsters earlier. And here I was an idiot and thought a dark fantasy Western would have something cool like magic bullets. But nope , Roland replenishes all the .45 Calibur ammo he needs from a New York gun shop after they portal back to Earth. I’d forgive something as stupid as this if the action scenes were awesome, but they ain’t shit. Poorly choreographed and edited and thrown together, you won’t even be able to enjoy the highlights on YouTube. Try not to laugh at the final showdown between Idris and McConaughey, which lasts all of two minutes and has The Man in Black throw a steel beam at Roland and levitate glass shortly thereafter. So he’s got the force now?

The problem here is everything is told and not shown. You learn everything from bad dialogue and extremely weak and standardly shot scenes that are then poorly cut together. And the stoner from Cabin in the Woods helps control the machine used to attempt to take down the tower. And it was old the first time McConaughey killed people by saying “stop breathing” and he keeps doing it. And the worlds are so badly established that the movie’s blending of fantasy and modern civilization fall so flat on their face. Aside from the hospital scene and the brief bus ride after which do get some good laughs.

But that’s about it. I was not riveted or excited or scared for one single moment. I sat passively in the dark , often shaking my head in disbelief, and bored outta my mind. And did I mention it’s supposed to be tense when McConaughey cooks chicken? And a $60 million budget and they couldn’t even get the visuals right. And most of the performances aside from Matt and Idris are awful, laughably and unspeakably so. FIRE AND DARKNESS!!!! FUCK YOU