The uncertainty and delays that plagued this production are immediately apparent in the final picture. This movie is a catastrophe, and a complete slight to fans of the Stephen King books, fans of Matthew McConaughey, and fans of science fiction/fantasy. Oh hell, this thing slights everybody. It looks like a low-level episode of Dr. Who, and we’re talking really schlocky, 1970s Dr. Who. You get the sense watching this that they used the same soundstage for all of their interiors and just repainted shit. The CGI is terrible, the pacing is ridiculously, unnecessarily fast, and the plot is confusing for those who haven’t read the books. I’ve never read the books and, after watching this, I don’t really care to. The story involves some kid named Jake (Tom Taylor), a sad teenager who is gifted with “The Shine,” the psychic powers Danny had in King’s The Shining. He dreams of another world where there is a dark tower that acts as some sort of barrier between other dimensions, protecting planets like Earth from evil. He also dreams of a gunslinger (Idris Elba) who is trying to kill the Man in Black. No, it’s not Johnny Cash. It’s some sort of devil man played by McConaughey whose intention is to hunt people with the Shine because their brains harness the power to shoot laser beams into the Dark Tower, thus destroying it and releasing goofy CGI monsters upon the Earth. You can go ahead and badmouth me all you want if I got any of this wrong but, I assure you, that’s the best I could gather from this hackneyed, rushed, underwhelming production. This is just a total shame.
The Dark Tower
