# The Dark Tower in theaters! (Spoilers) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 13, 2017, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-tower-in-theaters-spoilers/791176 "2017-07-13T16:46:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2017, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-tower-in-theaters-spoilers/791176/41 "2017-08-03T17:45:10Z")
This whole thing reminds me a bit of the 2011 \*Conan \*film starring Jason Momoa. They took what could have been the next great franchise, with tons of great lore to build on - not to mention a strong fan base and name recognition - gave it a decent cast, and then just shrugged their shoulders and pumped out a half-assed B-movie. It makes no sense. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2017, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-tower-in-theaters-spoilers/791176/42 "2017-08-03T18:03:54Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > This whole thing reminds me a bit of the 2011 \*Conan \*film starring Jason Momoa. They took what could have been the next great franchise, with tons of great lore to build on - not to mention a strong fan base and name recognition - gave it a decent cast, and then just shrugged their shoulders and pumped out a half-assed B-movie. It makes no sense. A common problem appears to be not trusting the source material to put enough bums in seats. Sure, the source has a fandom, but is it enough to make the movie pay? That’s the question that haunts the studios. So the creators try to compromise - add some flavor from the source material in the hope of attracting the fans, and some good old B movie action to attract non-fans … producing a sort of bland mish-mash that, falling between two stools, ends up attracting nobody. I can sort of picture pitching a movie idea - making _The Gunslinger_ (not the whole series, just the first book!). You know, the one that memorably starts with the Man in Black fleeing across the desert, with the Gunslinger following … much of the action takes place in a decaying desert town; the hero ends up - killing everyone in town; then he meets Jake, befriends him, lets him fall to his death; and finally - meets the Man, who tells his fortune. He falls asleep for a decade, waking up beside a skeleton. Then it ends. Yes it is one hell of a compelling book … but the studio execs would probably be horrified. No good explanation given as to what the Dark Tower is, or why Roland is willing to sacrifice everything for it. Ends on a cliffhanger. The hero appears to be a murdering psycho who heartlessly lets his only friend, a child, die. No good explanation of what the child is doing there. It’s weird, twisted, and above all risky story. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2017, 7:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-tower-in-theaters-spoilers/791176/43 "2017-08-04T07:59:50Z")
Yeah, the consensus appears to be in - the movie is awful and it butchers the mythology. A shame that after 10 years in development, _this_ is what they have to show for it. Maybe in another 10 years the Dark Tower can be adapted properly. In the meantime, let’s just add this to the list of reasons why Akiva Goldsman should be publicly horse-whipped and banned from screenwriting for life. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2017, 8:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-tower-in-theaters-spoilers/791176/44 "2017-08-04T08:04:31Z")
> [@G0sp3l](#): > > I’m not going to see the movie in theaters, so I won’t mind a spoiler. In the trailer I just noticed that Roland says that the Man in Black destroyed his world, now he’s coming to Earth. > > Is Roland an alien in this? I thought it was well established that the territories were a twin of Earth, differences but still our world. Did I miss something? In the books, Mid-World (where Roland comes from) is one of many parallel Earths, some of which are almost identical to Keystone Earth (I.e. the real world, where Stephen King lives and so do we) and others very different. The Man in Black (Randall Flagg) destroyed Roland’s civilization and the gunslingers and caused the world to “move on” as part of his plan to destabilize the Dark Tower and destroy the multiverse, which he’s doing because his master, the Crimson King (i.e. Satan) wants to undo Creation, usurp God, and remake the multiverse on his own terms. From what I gather, _none_ of this is explained in the movie and the Man In Black just wants to destroy the Dark Tower because he’s evil. ---
**Author:** ![GrumpyBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc8723/32.png) [@GrumpyBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrumpyBunny)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2017, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-tower-in-theaters-spoilers/791176/45 "2017-08-04T11:16:17Z")
Damn. Randall Flagg does get around. I’ll probably watch it on cable. I’d watch Idris Elba read the phone book for ninety minutes, though. ---
**Author:** ![AlsoNamedBort](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alsonamedbort/32/3213_2.png) [@AlsoNamedBort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlsoNamedBort)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2017, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-tower-in-theaters-spoilers/791176/46 "2017-08-04T14:18:18Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > I can sort of picture pitching a movie idea - making _The Gunslinger_ (not the whole series, just the first book!). You know, the one that memorably starts with the Man in Black fleeing across the desert, with the Gunslinger following … much of the action takes place in a decaying desert town; the hero ends up - killing everyone in town; then he meets Jake, befriends him, lets him fall to his death; and finally - meets the Man, who tells his fortune. He falls asleep for a decade, waking up beside a skeleton. Then it ends. The whole thing would work better as a TV show, with The Gunslinger as an extra long pilot, ala BSG. ---
**Author:** ![AlsoNamedBort](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alsonamedbort/32/3213_2.png) [@AlsoNamedBort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlsoNamedBort)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2017, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-tower-in-theaters-spoilers/791176/47 "2017-08-04T14:45:22Z")
Someone want to spoil how the movie ends? My interest in actually seeing this movie (other than maybe 5 years from now on FX) has pretty much dropped to 0. ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2017, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-tower-in-theaters-spoilers/791176/48 "2017-08-04T15:16:05Z")
> [@Quimby](#): > > 1. I was at the movies with a friend who has never read a page of Stephen King in his life. We saw a new trailer for this and he said, “That looks cool. I want to see it.” So whatever else, the marketing is working. Interesting. I am that person too and I saw the trailer and was like “this movie looks absolutely awful. How is it going to fill up 90 minutes??” After I saw it and realized what it was I discussed it with a SK fan and he didn’t have high hopes either. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2017, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-tower-in-theaters-spoilers/791176/49 "2017-08-04T15:21:49Z")
> [@AlsoNamedBort](#): > > The whole thing would work better as a TV show, with The Gunslinger as an extra long pilot, ala BSG. Agreed. It would have made an awesome TV series - if they had a huge budget! ---
**Author:** ![G0sp3l](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c68b51/32.png) [@G0sp3l](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/G0sp3l)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2017, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-tower-in-theaters-spoilers/791176/50 "2017-08-04T16:02:08Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > In the books, Mid-World (where Roland comes from) is one of many parallel Earths, some of which are almost identical to Keystone Earth (I.e. the real world, where Stephen King lives and so do we) and others very different. The Man in Black (Randall Flagg) destroyed Roland’s civilization and the gunslingers and caused the world to “move on” as part of his plan to destabilize the Dark Tower and destroy the multiverse, which he’s doing because his master, the Crimson King (i.e. Satan) wants to undo Creation, usurp God, and remake the multiverse on his own terms. > > From what I gather, _none_ of this is explained in the movie and the Man In Black just wants to destroy the Dark Tower because he’s evil. Yeah, I kind of framed my question badly. Roland’s mid-world is still _an_ earth, not ours but the main alternate to King’s book universe. It’s the same world that Jack Sawyer flips to in _The Talisman_ and _Black House_ right? ---
**Author:** ![Turek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/turek/32/18782_2.png) [@Turek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Turek)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2017, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-tower-in-theaters-spoilers/791176/51 "2017-08-04T19:43:27Z")
> [@GrumpyBunny](#): > > Damn. Randall Flagg does get around. Well, he _ **is** _ the Walking Dude. ---
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2017, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-tower-in-theaters-spoilers/791176/52 "2017-08-04T22:01:14Z")
> [@AlsoNamedBort](#): > > Someone want to spoil how the movie ends? My interest in actually seeing this movie (other than maybe 5 years from now on FX) has pretty much dropped to 0. Roland shoots Walter in the head, there’s a shot of his body with a bullet wound in the forehead. Roland asks Jake to come back with him to Mid-World to continue on their adventures. There is nothing during or after the credits that give any indication that Walter is not actually dead. All I knew about the story was it was a whole long series and Walter/The Man in Black/Randall Flagg/etc was the Big Bad, so that seemed strange to me that he was dispatched with pretty easily. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2017, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-tower-in-theaters-spoilers/791176/53 "2017-08-04T23:46:40Z")
> [@G0sp3l](#): > > Yeah, I kind of framed my question badly. Roland’s mid-world is still _an_ earth, not ours but the main alternate to King’s book universe. It’s the same world that Jack Sawyer flips to in _The Talisman_ and _Black House_ right? No, the Territories is somewhere else in the multiverse, and I don’t think Roland ever visits it. ---
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2017, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-tower-in-theaters-spoilers/791176/54 "2017-08-05T00:27:37Z")
This sucks. But I kinda knew in my heart that the books wouldn’t translate into the movie very well. For one, there’s not a lot of dialogue but instead a lot of scene-descriptive language. Another thing is how many books King had to write to tell the whole story. It spanned over a decade. There was no way that could be crammed into a single movie. I thought a trilogy like LOTR would have served this story much, much better. Three three hour long movies would have been a MINIMUM to do it proper justice. I’m surprised that King let this thing fly upon his purview prior to release. I guess that once the agreements are made, the money paid, etc there’s no stopping it even if the author of the source material objects. What a shame for a great, GREAT story about Good v Evil has to be truncated into a shell of itself this way. Boo! ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2017, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-tower-in-theaters-spoilers/791176/55 "2017-08-05T02:41:09Z")
> [@FoieGrasIsEvil](#): > > I thought a trilogy like LOTR would have served this story much, much better. Three three hour long movies would have been a MINIMUM to do it proper justice. I’m surprised that King let this thing fly upon his purview prior to release. I guess that once the agreements are made, the money paid, etc there’s no stopping it even if the author of the source material objects. What a shame for a great, GREAT story about Good v Evil has to be truncated into a shell of itself this way. Boo! It’d work much better as a serialized TV show a la Game of Thrones or Walking Dead, but that format hadn’t quite hit its stride yet when they started the project and I guess it was too late to go back. ---
**Author:** ![Fiveyearlurker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/da6949/32.png) [@Fiveyearlurker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiveyearlurker)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2017, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-tower-in-theaters-spoilers/791176/56 "2017-08-05T02:51:55Z")
> [@Fiveyearlurker](#): > > I count two movies based on Stephen King books in my top ten movies of all time (Stand By Me and Shawshank Redemption). Though, admittedly both only loosely follow the books. And admittedly there are some absolutely terrible Stephen King movies. > > I think the way that they are doing this, as a sequel that isn’t beholden to the books is promising, and probably better than doing it with devotion to the source material. > > I’m optimistic. I’m no longer optimistic. ---
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2017, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-tower-in-theaters-spoilers/791176/57 "2017-08-05T03:50:08Z")
> [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](#): > > Roland shoots Walter in the head, there’s a shot of his body with a bullet wound in the forehead. Roland asks Jake to come back with him to Mid-World to continue on their adventures. There is nothing during or after the credits that give any indication that Walter is not actually dead. All I knew about the story was it was a whole long series and Walter/The Man in Black/Randall Flagg/etc was the Big Bad, so that seemed strange to me that he was dispatched with pretty easily. To be fair, Flagg was dispatched with pretty easily in the books as well. There were a lot of changes that worked just fine, but a few big ones that really detracted from the adaptation. Here are the two biggest problems as I see them, but there are others. 1. Jake using psychic powers rather than training to use guns. 2. The way Flagg was portrayed as the leader of the taheen when in the books, at least by book 7, he was essentially working on his own rather than leading all the bad guys. ---
**Author:** ![Sir\_T-Cups](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ed655f/32.png) [@Sir\_T-Cups](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sir_T-Cups)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2017, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-tower-in-theaters-spoilers/791176/58 "2017-08-06T00:09:21Z")
Ms.Cups and I saw the movie and both really really enjoyed it. Neither of us have read the books, so we came into the movie blind from that front, but neither of us saw anything to warrant such terrible reviews. It reminded me a lot of a film version of a short story. Yes, you could tell there were parts of a larger world out there, but the movie told it’s own tight, little story without too much fluff. Sure, you have to take some leaps just accepting the fact that sorcerers and gunslingers and a magic tower are a things that exist, but once you do that it’s a quick read…er…view. The two leads are fantastic, McCoughnahey especially. The gunfights and action sequences are fun as well. The middle action scene is better than the final confrontation because there were more stakes involved, but both are well executed and make you cheer for the hero. The movie was a bit formulaic at times. “This is the part where the main characters fight”, “This is the part where the through-line makes a difference” is pretty obvious. That being said, if you have no prior knowledge or experience with the book series, then this is an above-average action movie that’s worth a viewing ---
**Author:** ![Patch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a183cd/32.png) [@Patch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patch)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2017, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-tower-in-theaters-spoilers/791176/59 "2017-08-07T04:24:36Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > From what I gather, _none_ of this is explained in the movie and the Man In Black just wants to destroy the Dark Tower because he’s evil. It’s my theory that the Man in Black wants to destroy the tower and all life so no one can laugh at his hair dye job. ---
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2017, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-tower-in-theaters-spoilers/791176/60 "2017-08-07T11:51:45Z")
$20 million in the 1st week…unless it does well overseas unlikely to make back the $60 mil the thing cost. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-tower-in-theaters-spoilers/791176.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-tower-in-theaters-spoilers/791176.md?page=4)