This is very very odd. The film is, my guess, utterly incomprehensible, if not silly, from a Dark Tower novice’s perspective. There is mid worlds and centerpiece worlds, gunslingers and black stones, dark towers and beams with turtles… and the effort to explain how this all belongs together and links to what that Roland supershooter does is weak, to say the least. For a Dark Tower fan, it deviates completely from what’s written, adds characters, adds science fiction elements and other weird stuff, without really getting to what’s the spirit of the novels. The Man in Black is a vulnerable villain-Jedi, no mystical dark force, and how the hell Jake gets through that first portal despite being attacked by some wooden panel monster eludes me… I do understand the intention of kicking off a set of sequels and tv shows, setting up a centerpiece movie from which all the other products will emerge, I actually got quite a bit excited about this idea, allowing the epicness of the volumes to unfold. But this? Nope… this was a belittling of a vast literary achievement, a dwarfification of a giant piece of literature. Might be that things can be resolved through some of the follow-up pieces, but then again, given the justifiedly devastating reception of this film, I very much doubt there will be much in terms of follow-up…
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_dark_tower_2017
thomas4cinema 