By: Matt Spaulding
I have loved Stephen King's epic "Dark Tower" series for many years. It's an incredible story that spans seven books (eight, if you count the later addition "The Wind Through the Keyhole" which takes place between books 4 and 5) and 1.3 million words. So when I heard that the series was set to be adapted to film, I was skeptical, but remained open-minded thinking that, if the Harry Potter film series could do justice to those books, a series of Dark Tower films might be able to do the same. I would have preferred a "Game of Thrones" type TV show, but I could live with movies.
Then I got evenmore distressing news: "The Dark Tower" was to be ONE film. WHAT? That struck me as absolute lunacy. To take all that material and strip it down to fit into one book would requiring gutting almost everything that made the series special and enjoyable. It would mean skipping major events, cutting out major characters and in general just wrecking the adventure.
Then more news came through. It's kind of tough to explain to people who haven't read the series without spoiling the end, but, basically, the world created in the books allows for it to continue in a brand new way after the end of the seventh book, and, it turns out, that's exactly what this film is meant to be. With that inmind, some of my optimism came back.
Then I saw this trailer. Now, it's only 90 seconds of footage, but, from what I can tell, all of my worst fears about condensing this story into one movie are going to come true. Important characters are nowhere to be seen. The role of the Man in Black appears changed. It looks, sad to say, like this movie is going to let fans of the series down.
But I'm still willing to give it a shot. Knowing that the movie is meant to be something different, I'm going to try. But my expectations are very low.
See the trailer for yourself below.