After years of being stuck in development hell, The Dark Tower is finally set for release this year. The long awaited film adaptation of Stephen King’s series of novels has been talked about for years. It has also gone through a number of changes over its lengthy planning stages. That all ends today as we’ve finally gotten the first trailer for the action/fantasy film.
King’s original series began with The Gunslinger back in 1982. From there, he has written eight additional books with the last one coming out in 2012. Fans have awaited a feature length adaptation since J.J. Abrams was attached to the project back in 2007. From there, Ron Howard took over the project with plans to have a trilogy of films along with two television miniseries runs in between them. Finally, in 2015, Sony Pictures Entertainment took on the project with Nikolaj Arcel in the director’s chair. This is the version that has ultimately come to fruition.
Though, this film isn’t necessarily an adaptation of the first book. The Dark Tower has been said to be a quasi-sequel to the books with elements from the first book. This is definitely going to be polarizing for fans and newcomers alike. For those who may not remember, Tim Burton did this same kind of thing with Alice in Wonderland and it wasn’t positively received because of it. Generally speaking, fans want to see the story that they read on the big screen while potentially new fans want to see what all the hubbub is about without reading the books. To have a new/different story with overlap of the original series seems illogical.
Regardless, this is rumored to be the direction that the movie is taking. As for the trailer, it has its ups and downs. Idris Elba seems to have settled into his role as the Gunslinger, Roland Deschain quite nicely. On the other hand, Matthew McConaughey as The Man in Black seems slightly hokey. McConaughey has had a nice resurgence as a serious actor in recent years but he hasn’t really played a villain either. The slow motion, Matrix-esque effects are cool to see, especially when Deschain is loading or shooting his guns. Yet, we’ve seen it all before in other films.
Either way, it will be interesting to see the final result of the production saga of The Dark Tower when the film is released on August 4th. Check out the first trailer and comment below.
