The Dark Tower (2017)

Starring: Idris Elba, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Taylor, Jackie Earle Haley, and Dennis Haysbert
Grade: B-

This is the story of Jake Chambers, a kid who has dreams of Matthew McConaughey. He considers them nightmares but if you talk to any 40-year-old mom, I think they’d disagree with him.

Summary

To open, we are told there is a tower at the center of the universe protecting us from darkness. Apparently, the mind of a child can bring it down.

Next, we see a bunch of kids on a playground. Adults are there too, but something is off about them. Seams are shown in their neck because they’re basically wearing costumes of skin. They’re actually creatures of some sort. Everyone then goes to this spaceship-looking base where the children are strapped to a chair unwillingly, and the power they contain ignites a beam that shoots down the Dark Tower. The Man in Black (McConaughey) watches over this process. This whole thing leads to darkness overcoming a nearby city. As soon as a monster jumps out of the clouds, an 11-year-old named Jake Chambers (Taylor) wakes up from his bed to aftershocks of an earthquake in real life.

Jake’s mother Laurie (Katheryn Winnick) asks if he had some bad dreams like he usually does, but Jake denies it. At breakfast, their neighbor Timmy (Michael Barbieri) shows up to see if they’re okay on behalf of his parents. After he leaves, Laurie reminds Jake he has an appointment with Dr. Hotchkiss (José Zúñiga) after school. Stepfather Lon (Nicholas Pauling) thinks the psychiatrist isn’t working for Jake, but Laurie thinks he’s making progress. Following this, Jake goes to his room to pin up another one of his most recent drawings. Strangely enough, all the drawings look like the Man in Black and the Dark Tower. His drawings are all based on his very vivid dreams. At school, he tries to draw some more, but a bully tries taking his notebook. This causes a fight, and Jake beats the kid’s ass before being sent home. At Dr. Hotchkiss’s appointment, they discuss how Jake believes that the Tower he dreams about has something to do with the earthquakes the city’s been having. He thinks the Tower is under attack, but he insists he’s not crazy. He dreams about this every night. This includes the Tower, the Man in Black, and all the people with fake skin. Playing along for a moment, Hotchkiss asks what would happen if the Tower were destroyed and Jake says, “darkness and fire”. Hotchkiss relates this to Jake’s feelings towards his father dying, but Jake doesn’t think this is the main problem. Hotchkiss lets him know these dreams aren’t real and right after he does, the aftershocks happen again.

Once Jake leaves and waits for his bus, he sees a man fix his face like he’s wearing a costume (just like the creatures in his dreams). A homeless guy tells Jake to not let “them” grab him and that they’re after his mind. Freaked out, Jake gets on the bus and goes home. Timmy wants to hang out, so they go inside, only to hear Laurie and Lon argue about what to do with Jake because of his most recent fight. Laurie notes that Jake’s school has been approached by a clinic upstate about kids with serious problems and there’s an opening this weekend. It’s science-based with things like brain scans and such. A pissed off Jake agrees to it, avoiding an argument. After a cooled-down conversation with Timmy, we see Jake trying to get over his fears and thoughts. That night, he rips all his drawings from the wall and goes to bed. Following this, he immediately gets a vision of the Man in Black killing someone. Meanwhile, we see Roland Deschain (Elba) tell his father Steven (Haysbert) that they (the Gunslingers) have lost. Steven still holds hope though. If the Dark Tower still stands, they still have a shot. Just then, the Man in Black shows up and simply says “Stop breathing”. Steven dies, but Roland is able to fight it. He has power that is able to fight the Man in Black’s dark magic. The Man in Black knows this, but he doesn’t seem to be worried. When he walks away, Roland demands he face him. Roland fires his pistol, but the Man in Black catches the bullet, promising that the Dark Tower will fall. The final part of the dream is a house in New York.

Jake wakes up with hope, realizing that this Gunslinger named Roland seems to be heroic. He starts doing research to try and find the house from the vision. He tells Timmy about it, but his parents don’t let him out of the apartment. Jake posts the picture of the house on a forum online to see if anyone knows where it is.

Just then, Lon interrupts and tells him the people from the clinic are here. Jill (Eva Kaminsky), the intake administration supervisor, talks to Jake first as the parents watch. For some reason, the driver is in the room too. The people already come off as super phony, but we realize they’re actually phony because Jake sees the seamed skin on the driver. They’re the people from his dreams! He takes Laurie into his room to “help him pack”, but he uses this as an opportunity to tell her these are the people he’s been drawing. She doesn’t believe him and neither does Lon, but she’s at least sympathetic towards him. Once Lon leaves the room after threatening Jake, he tries one last plea for help to Laurie. She feels for him but ultimately, she promises to get him after the weekend from this clinic if he doesn’t like it. Following her saying this, Jake notices that somebody replied on the message board on his computer to say the house he was searching for is in Dutch Hill, Brooklyn. He goes to the bathroom to “get his toothbrush” but instead uses the window to escape. The driver jumps out the window after him, and Jill goes to the street to catch him from the other side. Jake manages to elude them both and walks all the way to Dutch Hill to find the house. Laurie calls Jake’s phone, but he cuts the conversation short. He enters the abandoned home and finds the writing on the wall stating, “All hail the Crimson King”. There’s this odd computer thing on the wall that asks the “traveler” what destination he wants to go to. He types in the 4-digit code from his dream “19-19”.

The computer refers to this as Mid-World.

A portal opens in the wall but before he can go through it, a house demon attacks him. It only happens for short time though, and it eventually disappears after he yells for it to stop. Afterwards, he enters the portal, and the portal disappears behind him. Jake is in some desert and after a small sandstorm, he finds a tank.

Back at the Man in Black’s lair, all the workers search for new child candidates. After he shows up, he asks about the candidates, and we see there’s a picture of Jake on their computer. Two workers come in the room to tell the Man in Black that they have an “unauthorized crossing” on Keystone Earth. This startles the Man in Black enough for him to have his people open a portal to Earth. Meanwhile, an exhausted Jake finds a campsite and drinks water from a flask he finds. It’s Roland’s though, and he immediately pulls a gun on Jake. Jake shows him his drawings and asks if he’s a Gunslinger, but Roland tells him the Gunslingers are no more and that Jake’s dreams deceived him. Jake still persists, but once he mentions how he saw the Man in Black, Roland almost tosses him off a cliff because he thinks Jake is one of the Man’s tricks. Shortly after, he sees Jake’s drawings and he tells Jake that the Man in Black’s name is Walter Padick. Walter is an all-powerful sorcerer. Seeing that in all of Jake’s drawings and dreams that Walter is by the Dark Tower, Roland decides to take him to a nearby tribe for them to read his visions.

On actual Earth, Walter investigates the abandoned house that Jake was at. He meets with Sayre (Haley), a guy whose job is to guard this house. After Walter gives him some shit for letting this all happen, Walter gives him a piece of wood from the house and Sayre licks it. This is enough for him to realize it’s a human boy’s blood. Sayre says Jake’s “Shine is pure”. That is how he got through to other side.

A truly powerful psychic could override the power of a house demon, so clearly Jake has this “Shine” they talk about.

One of the women in the room notes that two “skins” had trouble with a boy yesterday. This only further Walter’s investigation.

Back in a forest on Mid-World, Jake and Roland hide from the Taheen, a race of creatures owned by Walter. Later that night, they eat a rabbit Roland caught while Jake notices the structures in the forest around them. They’re remnants of an amusement park, but Roland says no one knows what they are because they’re “ancient structures from before the world moved on”. Jake asks Roland about a specific vision he had of a bunch of bodies everywhere and Roland being the only one standing against Walter. Roland notes this was the final stand for the Gunslingers and that’s the day he lost his father. This war the Gunslingers fought was always about protecting the Tower. On Earth, Jill and the driver meet with Walter at a restaurant and have to plead their case to him, saying they lost Jake because it was as if he knew what they were. Walter is then given the file from them to find Jake’s home and name. Before he leaves, he uses his powers to have Jill and the driver kill each other. Back at the campsite, Jake makes a map of what he sees and Roland notes that there are many worlds (no one knows how many), and the Dark Tower stands at the center of it all. It has stood there since the beginning of time, sending out a powerful energy that protects the universe. It shields everyone from the demons outside trying to enter the universe. Walter wants to rule the universe by taking down the Tower and letting the monsters in.

Roland’s only mission is to kill Walter though. He doesn’t seem to care about what’s at stake regarding the Tower. He’s mentally over his mission as a Gunslinger. After we see another group of restrained kids power up that beam of energy, what Roland calls a “beamquake”, Jake realizes this is what is causing the earthquakes back home.

They both try to sleep, but Jake ends up wandering off. Roland wakes up after having a vision of Walter and realizes Jake is gone. In the forest, Jake sees his deceased father and has a conversation with him. It ends up being an illusion for a disguised demon to attack. Roland shows up just in time to shoot it down. It then shapeshifts into his father Steven, but he doesn’t fall for it and shoots it as well. Roland explains these demons are smart. They sense everyone’s weaknesses and create illusions to distract them. They come out after every attack on the Tower. If the Tower falls, more of them will come. Just then, another monster attacks and wounds Roland. Jake tries to go for his gun to save him, but the monster comes after Jake instead. Eventually, Roland takes out this demon too but gives Jake props for trying to go after the gun. The two then trek to the tribe for Jake’s visions to be read and for someone to heal Roland. Back on Earth, Laurie and Lon show up at their apartment to find Walter making food in the kitchen. A shocked Laurie recognizes him from Jake’s drawings and tells Lon. An interested Walter kills Lon and has Laurie show him the drawings. Now, he knows of Jake and his background in the matter. Before he leaves though, he reminds Laurie of the guilt she probably feels for sending her only son to an asylum for not believing in him.

There are two questions left. Can Jake and Roland stop Walter before he destroys the Dark Tower, or will Roland’s thirst for revenge screw up their mission of saving the universe?

My Thoughts:

For such a detailed book with such dark mythology behind it, The Dark Tower came off as surprisingly generic.

Considering the amount of source material that was available for reference, it seems strange that this was the final product. The positives are Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey. In a passing view, it’s still entertaining because of these two. Roland Deschain might not be exactly like how he is from the book, a character similar to Clint Eastwood in look and style, Elba does his own thing and still makes it cool. He has a history of doing this in movies he’s cast in (as you may have noticed). Roland has seen a lot of death as a member of the Gunslingers in Mid-World. He’s looked at as a last hope, but he plays the beaten up and jaded badass very well. Now, he’s all about revenge. He wants the Man in Black in Walter Padick, played by a smooth, Satan-influenced Matthew McConaughey. His jet-black hair is a bit distracting, but he still does very well as the perfect big-name opposition for someone as good as Elba. Though I would still argue both men might have done even better if they switched roles, they still did a pretty good job as is. Every scene that stands out as something cool or memorable involves either of these two characters. The whole time, we’re building to a showdown between the ultimate hero and villain. This is what we’re excited for. The marketing team knew this because most of the alternate posters going into the release of the film were about the battle between these two.

Am I misremembering things, or am I wrong in saying all the trailers seem to have the selling point of Elba vs. McConaughey?

I didn’t even know the kid was going to be involved.

Is it not clear? The problem was Jake Chambers.

The material of the book is very dark, and it needed a movie to honor this. However, the focus on the kid made this feel much more like a Percy Jackson adventure movie rather than what we should’ve seen out of The Dark Tower. The PG-13 rating was evident. When you have such an evil, morally corrupt character like Walter, he needs to be doing some terrible things. Having him walk by a daughter and a mother on Earth and influencing the child to hate her mother for no reason, other than he notices them sitting there, is a pretty terrible thing to do. It shows the type of sorcerer he is. He loves chaos and destruction. We needed more of this. He has this dark energy around him that intimidates anyone he comes in contact with. McConaughey brings the level of seriousness needed in the role, but the movie needed more of these moments. It really felt like they were trying to hold back with the full development of his character. This goes for Roland too. Both give us a great taste, but neither character is unleashed to their full potential. The whole movie felt like they were holding back because they needed extra time to establish Roland’s budding friendship with Jake. Because of this, Walter loses a lot of steam by the end of the film and the final showdown that we’re waiting all movie for isn’t nearly what we expected. Despite the power both main characters contain, everything came and went way too easily. The payoff did not warrant the buildup whatsoever.

They want you to focus on the friendship so badly that it takes over the movie’s action. Jake isn’t a bad character or anything, but he doesn’t warrant this much attention. It’s just not what we came to see.

If they got rid of Jake entirely (which they can’t because of the book it’s based on) or lessened his importance in the film by 50% (definitely possible) and used the remaining time to further develop Roland and Walter, this would’ve had grade “A” potential. It could’ve had franchise potential, especially if piggybacked more off Idris Elba’s Roland. Making him a supporting character to service this incarnation of The Dark Tower did a disservice to what the movie could’ve been.

The other issue is the length. Very rarely do I wish a film to be longer, but this is a very in-depth world we are being introduced to. To build this world for the mainstream audience that doesn’t know what this story is about, you need to hit the two-hour mark at a minimum. It doesn’t take a genius to watch the final product and see that with more length, they were on the cusp of something great. With an extended runtime, you can really explain the details of the Dark Tower, the history and what we should expect out of Mid-World, and more screen time for Roland and Walter and their everyday duties in their roles. Let me see them interact with their worlds more! I know how Earth is. I live there. I want to know more about Mid-World! I want to know about the different worlds involved and how what they do affects the rest of the universe. With that being said, the scenes with Roland on Earth were very funny, especially the hospital scene when they tell him he has four types of hepatitis and he’s just like, “I’m good” and leaves. Even so, I needed more Roland, or Elba being Elba. They did a solid job at introducing Jake and making him important, but I just felt the selling point of the movie (Elba vs. McConaughey) was so secondary once Jake got involved.

Also, this may sound gruesome, but I was strangely mad at Lon’s death for not being more brutal. That dude was one son of a bitch.

Don’t get me wrong, The Dark Tower was still entertaining enough because of our stars. I still liked a lot of elements at play. However, I can’t help but think that if I read the books, I’d probably be royally pissed off at what the movie became. It had the potential of superstar status, and it bothers me that as decent as the movie was, it could’ve been so much more. Sadly, it turned into another child-discovers-new-fantasy-world type of movie instead of the crazy sci-fi action western it should’ve been.

Fun Fact: Russell Crowe, Javier Bardem, and Viggo Mortensen were all considered to play Roland. It has been rumored that Liam Neeson was close as well. When the characters of Eddie and Susannah Dean were considered to be in the screenplay, Aaron Paul and Naomie Harris were looked at as potential candidates to take the roles.