However, there have been many disappointments that I have lost count on.
The marketing and hype for The Dark Tower has been building up for sometime now. With it being in the works for about a decade, it is finally being put to film. The buzz was pretty big and the concept sounded great. That is until about a month before its release. Reports were coming in that several people working on it were fearful of the reactions from the fans.
Despite all of that, I as usual went in with an open mind. Now that I've seen it, it is most certainly not a total mess. But it is first and foremost, a disappointment.
That being said, you can see a lot of potential throughout this sci-fi action blockbuster. Whenever it showed you something interesting whether it be character development or within its world, it always seemed to get brushed over and moved swiftly into something else. Then before you know it, it's over in 90 minutes. For something that I believe is nine books, to compile it into a short duration is ridiculous. But I did hear somewhere that it is a continuation from the books. Hearing mixed signals on what it is supposed to be sounds like a combination of bad marketing and that the studio and film-makers had no idea what to do with this beloved source material.
They skim over so much. Something with such a vast amount of world-building should never get out before it even got started. It was like the complete opposite of what Peter Jackson did with The Hobbit. Doing this will never get anyone invested in the story or the characters.
Thankfully, there are a healthy amount of good stuff to talk about. I like the performances. I was impressed by child actor Tom Taylor. He gave me a very believable character and his acting had a lot of range that he used at the right times.
Idris Elba was pretty solid. There was an interesting character in there. But like a lot of this film, it was never fully fleshed out. As for Matthew McConaughey, I enjoyed his performance. He came off as terrifying and was given some great lines that he executed rather well. You can see him having fun with this. But it is a shame that we only scratched the surface of him as I think this could have been a very memorable movie villain.
I have not read any of the installments of the book series, and seeing this made want to read the books. For someone who has not read a book in full in years, that is not a good thing.
This film is a real shame. If the film-makers let this story breathe and give us the duration it deserves, this would have been a real thrill ride of sci-fi action.
I did have fun with it though. I like the mythology, the gadgets and the performances. But the general rushed nature of it just had me thinking this was wasted potential. If this had better directing, if the studio have more faith the story and had a more vast script, this could have been a really good blockbuster with great re-watchability.
You don't learn much about the world. It's like they expected you have read the books or they were setting up a franchise. Every film-maker's goal should be to just make a great film. But sadly, the world we live in has too many examples of films that are set-ups for future films that you may not necessarily get in the end.
For a something like a Stephen King novel, you need to commit to the source material, and they just did not do that.
Despite its problems, there is enough in here that gets a pass rating for me, and that is solely on the potential you can see whilst watching it. This will forever be labelled as a missed opportunity. I can see fans of the book series being horrified by it and thinking this a film that no one wanted.
Rating: 7/10
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