I love the Dark Tower series from Stephen King. The final books fizzle a bit, but the series as a whole is one of my favorites. I remember seeing the trailer for the film and just shaking my head with a groan. I knew. Even from a minute long trailer, I knew. This was going to suck. I didn't see the film, mainly due to the tidal wave of negative reviews, but I knew I would see it eventually. I finally ended up watching it on a plane and I found that although it was not as bad as I had heard, it was a lifeless, ho-hum affair that did almost nothing to capture the grand, fantasy western epic that I had grown to love over two decades. I was disappointed, but mostly, I forgot about it by the time I got off the plane.
There have long been rumors that the series would get a tv show, although at first, the plan was to have a season of shows bridging the gap between three films. The "first" film was bad, and, foolishly, it ended rather neatly (although the cheap ending tried to pull people in, it was transparent as hell), so there wasn't a lot to look forward to. The Gunslinger wins, and now he needs to... uh... find a new nemesis. Not exactly compelling stuff. Stephen King, who initially gave the film his blessing, talked to Entertainment Weekly last year, and I think he nails why the movie didn't work.
"The real problem, as far as I’m concerned is, they went into this movie, and I think this was a studio edict pretty much: this is going to be a PG-13 movie. It’s going to be a tentpole movie. We want to make sure that we get people in there from the ages of, let’s say, 12 right on up to whatever the target age is. Let’s say 12 to 35. That’s what we want.So it has to be PG-13, and when they did that I think that they lost a lot of the toughness of it and it became something where people went to it and said, 'Well yeah, but it’s really not anything that we haven’t seen before."
Egregiously agree.
Well, maybe the studio execs thought the same thing, because it looks like they are scrapping the films (for now) and focusing on an all-new show. Idris Elba, who portrayed the Gunslinger (Roland Deschain) was tied to the series way back when, but it is not yet known if he will return to the series.
What do we think, King fans? Is this going to work? Is the Dark Tower series more suited for a weekly style format, or should they just start over with the films and, you know, do a good job? Let me know in the comments.
