“The Dark Tower” spends ninety minutes telling a story while doing almost nothing but dumping exposition on the audience. And yet, when the movie was over I knew as little about this world coming out than I did going in to it. With films like “Lord of the Rings,” and “Star Wars,” the creators manage to disseminate information and world build while also giving audiences an experience. “The Dark Tower” feels so under-developed and poorly developed, almost feeling like a truncated idea of what kind of movie series “The Dark Tower” was intended to be. I still don’t know what the Dark Tower is. I still don’t know who Roland Deschain is.
I still don’t know why The Man in Black wants to destroy the Dark Tower. Why are bullets rare in Roland’s land? Why did they mold bullets from Excalibur? What does Arthur of Eld have to do with the Man in Black? Why are bullets rare in Roland’s land? If only the bullets from Excalibur can affect the Man in Black, why does Roland steal normal bullets in our world? What’s the parallels of cell towers to the dark tower? If The Man in Black destroys the Dark Tower, then what happens? Can only Gunslingers kill the Man in Black? Does Roland have the Shine, too?
Finally, if all of King’s works are tied together, was the monster that lured young Jake away the same breed of monster that Pennywise is? Is Roland Deschain a human being or some kind of humanoid from another universe? For what it’s worth, Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey give very good performances and I imagine in a better made movie, they might have even delivered excellent performances. The movie feels so confused and imbalanced most of the time with so much of the mythology seemingly left on the cutting room floor in favor of world jumping and gun fights galore.
We only visit Roland’s world for about thirty minutes until we’re given a silly fish out of water narrative with Roland adjusting to our wacky world. He even learns about hot dogs. That’s wacky. “The Dark Tower” feels so much like it should have at least given us ninety more minutes to ease in to this world, but even folks that have read the entire “The Dark Tower” saga might have a tough time getting acclimated to the events that unfold here. It’s never made clear is the studio were just intimidated by Stephen King’s source material, or were embarrassed by it. In either case, I don’t know much about “The Dark Tower,” but I know enough to understand that this isn’t it.
I left it wanting more. Knowing there’ is so much more left a bad after taste.