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The Dark Tower

First reviews...

It doesn't come as a surprise to me that Dark Tower has been panned by the critics. If you gonna turn ambitious, deep and detailed series into a 95 min (sic!) shallow summer blockbuster, don't expect to have a decent film.
I anticipated some years ago that it'd happen. Hiring Akiva Goldsman as a producer and screenwriter is ALWAYS a bad idea (think of Batman & Robin, The Winter Tale, The Da Vinci Code, The Rings etc.)...

Hollywood once again pisses me off.
 
Zagadka said:
 95 min
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Wtf. I haven't even read the Dark Tower and I know that's stupid.
Was hoping Nikolaj Arcel would be able to direct a killer blockbuster, given the awesome "A Royal Affair". But noooope.

I might treat this like The Mummy, and go into it just so I can laugh at the film.

EDIT: I'm convinced Akiva Goldsman wrote "A Beautiful Mind" by accident. It is the exception is his vast filmography...

EDIT 2: Stephen King was involved in the making, and likes the film. Yup. Guaranteed crap. He is a terrible judge of his own adaptations.
 
Whaddya know, it looks like there were some Problems in Post Productions (it reminds me last year's Suicide Squad problems).

So probably even "the longer cut" was a piece of trash. No cuts will help you if your script sucks in this case.
 
It really didn't need to be this complicated. All they needed to do was adapt the first book and leave it at that.
 
Q2 said:
It really didn't need to be this complicated. All they needed to do was adapt the first book and leave it at that.
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Even simpler, all they had to do was make a decent movie.
 
A quote from the London Evening Standard review gave me a chuckle...

Elba's sublime professionalism in treating the part as worthy of him, and the dialogue as if it deserves to be spoken out loud, saves the movie from total annihilation, just as The Gunslinger saves this world.
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...and Robbie Collin's review...


..suggests it is a film ruined in the edit. So if some deleted scenes are forthcoming, this could have fanedit potential. I'm almost tempted to see it, just to write a cutlist :D .
 
According to Nikolaj Arcel:

I think there’s like, five or six little scenes, but they’re all going to be on the DVD, on the deleted scenes. I think the fat cut or whatever it’s called was maybe 10 or 12 minutes longer or something like that.
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Well, I wouldn't hold my breathe for more deleted material... but who knows? :)
 
Zagadka said:
I anticipated some years ago that it'd happen. Hiring Akiva Goldsman as a producer and screenwriter is ALWAYS a bad idea (think of Batman & Robin, The Winter Tale, The Da Vinci Code, The Rings etc.)...
Click to expand...

It baffles me that this guy continues to get work, at least when it comes to popcorn films. As if destroying the Batman franchise so that it lay dormant for nearly a decade wasn't enough, he was allowed to ruin Lost in Space (which, admittedly, overlapped with the timing of Batman & Robin), and then make fans very unhappy with I, Robot; I am Legend; Hancock;  and so on.

And Paramount must know that their Transformers movies make tons of money, but that the critics and fans hate them. So who do they bring in to turn things around? Avika friggin' Goldsman. It might have been better to have the cast ad-lib the thing than to let him touch it.

I could see him continuing to get work on historical dramas after A Beautiful Mind. But why they continue to let him destroy franchises, or prevent franchises from occurring, is beyond me.
 
Watched it last night, boy was that a mess of a film, not read the books so I didn't have any preconceived idea of what to expect but jeez that Akiva Goldsman is the 'kiss of death' to everything he touches. Worst film I've seen this year it even managed to outdo 'Rings'
 
Ron Howard was going to work on this, and Ron Howard directed the one good film Akiva Goldsman ever wrote...

Ron Howard is the missing link. We needed you, Ron Howard. Where were you when we needed you, Ron Howard?
 
I like some of Ron Howard's stuff 'Rush' was great, but the Robert Langdon/Dan Brown films were all unbelievably dull, I question whether he could have made much of an impact on this....
 
Goldsman also did some good work on the first two seasons of Fringe, but he was steered by the much more talented Jeff Pinkner (strangely also a co-writer here) and J.J. Abrams. But I agree that when given total freedom, he does consistently terrible work.

Such a shame with this good casting (Jake also looks the part, I think) that the film turned out like this.

I think the blame has to lie with Arcel too. He was in way over his head here.
 
I'm not familiar with either actor, but I'm excited for this regardless.
 
It wasn't supposed to be a reboot, it was supposed to be a prequel to the movie, with McConaughey returning as Walter and Idris Elba returning as adult Roland (presumably telling the story to Jake as a framing device), with a young Roland being cast at some point.

Then the movie was a hot stinking pile of trash so they shifted gears to a reboot. Thank God.
 
Yes! Since the series will apparently be an origin story, that means it will be based on the flashbacks of the first book: The Gunslinger, and a majority of book 4: Wizards and glass, which I will read soon.
 
Wonder if they're going to take the route the comic adaptation did and just keep going chronologically after the Wizard and Glass "young Roland" material is done.
 
I'd prefer if they go the order of the books and not start out with the backstory stuff, but in the end I'm fine with whatever they do, as long as it's good. Hopefully I can finish reading the series by the time the show comes out.
 
The flashbacks work in the book series as a way of getting to know the characters that we've already been on adventures with. I can see an origin story working though, particularly if it frames and sets up the overarching plot well. Past that I imagine they'd have to decide whether to continue the story into book 1 and onward.
 
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