• Home
  • Meetings
  • Events
  • Blog
  • E-Board
  • Around Boston
  • Join
Northeastern University's Film Enthusiasts Club
.

Carter Sigl on The Dark Tower

8/4/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
As a film critic, I see a lot of bad movies. Although it’s always painful to sit through one, you get used to it after a while. By now only the really awful ones affect me (*cough cough* Fantastic Four), and some of them can even be enjoyable if you’re in the right mindset. Nowadays, sometimes the most disappointing movies aren’t even the really bad ones, but the average ones that wasted their potential to be good or great. The Dark Tower, based on Steven King’s novel series of the same name, is unfortunately one such film. 
​
Every morning, Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor) wakes up sweating after having horrible nightmares. The dreams are always about the same things: ruined worlds, a Man in Black (Matthew McConaughey), a mysterious Gunslinger (Idris Elba), and an impossibly tall tower. His mother and therapist thinks they are merely echoes resulting from his father’s death, but Jake isn’t so sure. His suspicions are confirmed one day when creatures with fake faces attempt to kidnap him, and in his escape he finds a portal to another world. Soon, he realizes that the Gunslinger –Roland- and everything else he dreamed is real, and that he has an important part to play in protecting the Tower.

For those who don’t know, The Dark Tower is Steven King’s magnum opus- a sprawling series combining elements of high fantasy, Westerns, horror, and a heaping dose of post-modern weirdness on top. It’s quite different from all of his other works, and fans have long considered the series to be unfilmable. I’m not convinced that’s the case, but what’s clear is that director Nikolaj Arcel and the group of screenwriters all bit off more than they could chew. The Dark Tower is not a horrible film- there is nothing about I particularly hated about it. But basically everything about it screams wasted potential.
​
For starters, we have the basic structure of the film. Although Jake was always a character in the novels, he was never the focus of the story, and I believe the film makers made a major error when deciding that he should be the lead in the film. It basically turned a sprawling literary epic into an average young-adult film. And while Tom Taylor’s acting is not bad, he simply isn’t strong enough to carry the film. Idris Elba, on the other hand, is excellent; his sheer presence should be enough to convince any fan that he was the right pick for the role. Matthew McConaughey, while also not bad, is again wasted potential. I was hoping he would be like an evil version of Rust Cohle from True Detective, but he ends up acting more like the generic wizard bad guy from numerous forgettable fantasy films and novels. 

For a movie about a gunslinger, the action scenes in this movie were quite underwhelming. Although there is the occasional bright spot, like one scene where Roland shoots an attacker using solely is hearing to locate the target, but for most part the fact that he is the best shot in the universe is something which is stated rather than shown. Perhaps I have simply been spoiled in this post-John Wick world, but so much more could have been done with this, even keeping with the PG-13 rating. And most frustrating of all is the world of the film itself. There are so many intriguing bits of world-building which are briefly shown and then never mentioned again. There was so much potential to show a living, breathing, bizarre world (worlds actually) which was just not developed enough. Some of this can probably be explained by the film’s measly 95 minute run time, but certainly not all of it.

This is a film which is disappointing not because of what it is. This is a film which is disappointing because of what it’s not, and because of what it could be. In the hands of a more skilled creative team, who didn’t decide that it would be best to make a shallow young adult film out of probably the most bizarre Steven King work, this could have been a great movie. But it’s not. Instead, it’s the sort of movie that you might watch if you saw it while channel surfing or that might sit in your Netflix queue for a couple of months before you may or may not get around to watching it. I’m not sure if this film has forgotten the face of its father, but it sure as hell should call him once in a while.

Grade: C
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Categories

    All
    AJ Martin
    Andy Robinson
    Anime
    Anthony Formicola
    Anu Gulati
    Arjun Agarwal
    Arzu Martinez
    Ben Garbow
    Brandon Isaacson
    Brian Hamilton
    Carter Sigl
    Dan Simeone
    Discussion
    Elizabeth Johnson Wilson
    Eliza Rosenberry
    Emily Fisler
    Erick Sanchez
    Eric Tatar
    Essays
    Festivals
    Gabrielle Ulubay
    Haley Emerson
    Here's Some Movies
    Ian Wolff
    IFF Boston
    IFFBoston 2015
    Interviews
    Isaac Feldberg
    Kunal Asarsa
    Library
    Lists
    Marguerite Darcy
    Marissa Marchese
    Mary Tobin
    Meghan Murphy
    Mike Muse
    Mitch Macro
    Neel Shah
    Netflix Instant Watch
    Parth Parekh
    Patrick Roos
    Profiles
    Reviews
    Short Films
    Television
    This Week In Movies
    Tyler Rosini

    Want to Write for Us?

    Contact NUFEC President Ian Wolff at nufecblog@gmail.com if you're interested in writing for this blog!

    Archives

    April 2022
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    October 2019
    September 2019
    June 2019
    April 2019
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.