The Dark Tower trailer

Cafe Society
1

So, The Dark Tower trailer is out.

Linky.

In the novel Jake is pushed in front of his car and dies. In the trailer, a magic portal opens. This kills a large part of the second book, The Drawing of Three. The Drawing of Three is, imho, the best book in the series.

Jake had visions of the Gunslinger. Bwah?

Roland and Jake are running around New York City. Bwah?

I could go on, but won’t bother. This is gonna be crap

I am not impressed. It appears that they took the books and distilled them down to a) a guy who shoots really well b) a kid and c) lets add in some monsters! and turned it into, well, actually I am not sure what the hell they turned it into but it isn’t the Dark Tower series.

Slee

Luckily I wasn’t planning on seeing this in the theater anyway…

2

Meh. I don’t think that the series are High Art or anything, and at least this movie looks like it will have a lot of Idris Elba loading guns in cool ways, which is something.

3

I never really got into the books. I read the first one but wasn’t interested enough to continue. That being said, the trailer looks great and I am looking forward to seeing the movie.

4

Well, he had visions of the rose and such in the book, didn’t he?

Well - there’s large portions of “Song of Susannah” that involve just that. The movie I believe is a stand-alone film now.

[quote]
I could go on, but won’t bother. This is gonna be crap
[/spoiler]
No Eddie? No Susannah/Detta? 7 epic books boiled down to a 2 hour action movie? Yeah - it’s going to be terrible.

5

Movie Roland is ALMOST as skilled reloading as book Roland.

Idris Elba IS WAY cooler than Clint.

It looks like the movie is going to leave out a lot that I liked in the books but it does look to at least be fun. I’ll watch.

6

Solid series, but agreed. I am reading the Book of the New Sun and the difference is stunning. Dark Tower is fun, but hardly top level art.

7

I read somewhere that the films are actually a sequel series to the books. They portray the next cycle in the looping series of events. Thus things will be different from the books. We shall see.

8

The entire Odetta/Detta arc is probably the most compelling one of the entire series. By making the lead black, they pretty much have no chance of integrating anything remotely resembling that into any sequels (which I am sure won’t exist when this inevitably sinks and dies). Biggest WTF casting decision I can think of in a good long while…

9

How come?

10

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”

If that’s how it starts, I’ll give it a look.

Heck, if that’s how it ends, I’ll give it a look.

11

Given the nature of the books I imagine the movie(s) wouldn’t even be considered an adaptation but rather just another parallel world that the Tower touches so any changes would be okay.

12

A large part of The Drawing of Three is based on a black woman who, without getting into serious spoilers, has issues with the white guy Roland.

That dynamic is gone.

Also, just read the wiki and yes, this is a ‘new take’ on the series base on books 1, 3 and 4.5.

In other words, they left out the best book.

It may be a good movie but I suspect there are going to be a lot of pissed off fans.

Slee

13

Yeah, I guess they could make Odetta white, but we’d lose a lot of Detta’s colorful metaphors in the process. Just doubtful it would work well the other way. Welp, since it won’t happen either way, no more brain cells wasted worrying about it.

14

I don’t know enough about Idris Elba to say whether he will make a good Roland. It would have been better, maybe, to tell one of the side stories about Roland than to try to condense any significant part of the main multi-volume story into a single movie. Fans of the books would still go to see it because of the character and the movie could be sold to others just as a fantasy western.

15

This trailer doesn’t really inspire confidence. It looks too much straight-up action movie with fantasy elements—which I get is what sells, but isn’t really what the series is. Roland isn’t an action hero.

Also, Idris Elba simply doesn’t look nearly grizzled and world-weary enough for Roland. I have faith enough in his acting chops to think he’ll be enjoyable enough, but he’s got his work cut out to make a believable gunslinger.

I think maybe the best way to approach this is to think of it as more-or-less separate from the novels, just something involving some of the same themes, and see whether it holds its own on that basis.

16

I’m sorry, but Roland Deschain is one of the deadliest non-magical warriors in fantasy literature; he’s very much an action hero. He’s other things as well, but “action hero” is an essential part of his makeup.

17

It will certainly be a different dynamic, but assuming that Odetta is black in the movie doesn’t guarantee that she won’t have issues with Roland. I think Roland is going to have issues with a lot of people, and so is Odetta. I think the writers can work around the fact that they’re the same race and still generate friction. All black people don’t get along, right?

18

I will see it … And be very disappointed.

To quote Mrs. Cad, “How can you have the Dark Tower without the ka-tet?!”

19

I really do seem to be the confused guy around here. Isn’t this just book 1, which is Jake and Roland? The kat-tet group we all love and adore wasn’t until book 2, was it?

20

It’s not based on the books, per se.

It seems like they’re taking the comic book movie approach: take some of the characters and settings and write an original story with whatever bits and pieces of actual source material you think will fit.