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 For those of you unaware, The Dark Tower Cycle is a series of 8 books by Stephen King, now being brought to the big screen by director Nikolaj Arcel. The eight books, written over the past 40 odd years (and you thought George RR Martin took forever) tell the story of Roland Deschain, the Gunslinger, a sort of knight errant in a dying world on a quest to reach a quasi-mythical structure known as The Dark Tower at the center of both his and all worlds. In the process, he pursues one of the chief architects of the end of his world, Walter O'Dim aka The Man In Black. Along the way he meets with several people from another world (ours) who help him on his quest. That's the super Cliff Notes version. I won't lie and say the series is perfect, as King started to hurry the series up following his being hit by a van back in the early 2000's and the series suffers from his urgency. But the film here has...differences. Which if you've read the books makes total sense relating to that image at the top of the page. Essentially, the film begins precisely where the final book ends. Cast: Idris Elba - Roland Deschain of Gilead, the Gunslinger  "I do not aim with my hand; he who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I aim with my eye." Roland is silent, he is brooding, he is deadly. And those guns he's holding are forged from Excalibur. Yeah. Matthew McConaughey - Walter O'Dim, the Man in Black  "Shake the hand that shook the world." Walter is the chief lieutenant of the Stephen King version of Satan, who is instead called The Crimson King. He also banged Roland's mom. Alex McGregor - Susan Delgado, girl at the window (no character image released yet, will update when it does) "Ka (fate/destiny) is like the wind." Susan Delgado was Roland's first love, met when they were in their teens. However, she was burned to death due to the machinations of a witch, so her presence in the film is likely to be in flashback. Tom Taylor - Jake Chambers, the kid from Earth  "Go then, there are other worlds than these." Jake Chambers was just your everyday, average young kid until he started having visions of Roland, Walter, and the Tower. In this film, he is key to either saving it or destroying it. Now, Sony Pictures has apparently decided that The Dark Tower needs promotion beyond die hard Stephen King fans, so they've started an ARG. If you want to participate, download the "Sombra Group" app. It has an image scanner built into it (please note that it is not a QR Code thing). Point it at various Dark Tower related images such as the one heading this post or the cover of Entertainment Weekly's Dark Tower issue some kind of result. There's also a section on the app "FOR EMPLOYEES", but no word on how to access it as of yet. The movie is slated for a release date of February 17th, 2017. Ensign_Ricky fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Jul 23, 2016 |
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Jul 23, 2016 18:49
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SO instead of Detta Walker being a super racist black woman who hates white Roland, she'll be a white republican? Ha ha ha ha but still sorta serious.
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Jul 23, 2016 19:37
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GORDON posted:SO instead of Detta Walker being a super racist black woman who hates white Roland, she'll be a white republican? Ha ha ha ha but still sorta serious. Nope. Odetta/Detta/Susannah and Eddie are not in the film.
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Jul 23, 2016 19:41
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Ensign_Ricky posted:Nope. Odetta/Detta/Susannah and Eddie are not in the film. Are they planning on doing one movie = one book? Probably not if it bombs.
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Jul 23, 2016 20:27
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Looks like they're combining elements of all the books, and if it does well they'll do more. Wizard and Glass might still get a TV series. There's a Sombra App too that has an Employee Login, but it doesn't seem to work. Scanning stuff like the EW cover with the app makes cool stuff show up.
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Jul 24, 2016 01:22
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Is this supposed to be the full series or is it meant to be part of a trilogy?
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Jul 24, 2016 01:29
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This is one of my most anticipated upcoming movies. Not sure how good it will be, especially since it seems like it's pretty rushed, but the book series is one of my favorites and Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey are great. This is pretty clearly not a direct adaptation of any book, but seems like it will draw the most from the second.
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Jul 24, 2016 02:02
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computer parts posted:Is this supposed to be the full series or is it meant to be part of a trilogy? I believe trilogy. Chairman Capone posted:This is pretty clearly not a direct adaptation of any book, but seems like it will draw the most from the second. Actually, it's kind of its own thing. Like I said, it literally picks up where book seven ends.
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Jul 24, 2016 04:46
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I was seriously relieved when I read they were doing it as a continuation rather than an adaptation of the books. George R R Martin may like to claim his books are unfilmable, but between the licensing for music, comics, movies and everything else that's mentioned in the books, without serious good will from the owners of those properties, I seriously believe the budget would be in the billions. For however many movies, miniseries, etc. I'm only disappointed we won't get to see Wizard And Glass adapted with Sam Elliot as Jonas. I'm excited for this thread because I'm a serious drat Dark Tower geek. Thanks for doing the legwork, OP!
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Jul 24, 2016 12:02
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Count me in as one of the many who loved the series but was disappointed at the obvious rush-job that went into the final works as King's fear of his mortality forced him to push through rather than let it come organically. I love the idea of the movie(s?) as a continuation of the books and the casting for the two leads is pretty loving great. I'm not really familiar with Nikolaj Arcel but I have high hopes that this'll turn out good.
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Jul 24, 2016 12:46
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Ensign_Ricky posted:Actually, it's kind of its own thing. Like I said, it literally picks up where book seven ends. Well, yeah, but there are obviously going to be some broad similarities and the fact that most of this movie seems to be "Roland goes into modern America to get some of his ka-tet" seems most like the second book. gileadexile posted:I'm only disappointed we won't get to see Wizard And Glass adapted with Sam Elliot as Jonas. I don't usually do celebrity casting of books in my mind, but this was one of the only times where, when I read that character, I immediately thought of Sam Elliot as the only logical person who could fit that role. Jerusalem posted:Count me in as one of the many who loved the series but was disappointed at the obvious rush-job that went into the final works as King's fear of his mortality forced him to push through rather than let it come organically. I had issues with each of the last three but Song of Susannah is the only one that was a full-on disappointment. It really could have been condensed into the fifth and seventh books and none of the major things would have been lost. I really liked Wolves of the Calla and other than some of the stuff with Flagg and the Crimson King, I like the majority of The Dark Tower, too.
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Jul 24, 2016 15:49
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Chairman Capone posted:I don't usually do celebrity casting of books in my mind, but this was one of the only times where, when I read that character, I immediately thought of Sam Elliot as the only logical person who could fit that role. Cool. Now there's no reason that Jonas can't be cast by a person of color of dubious gender, and George Takei will take to Twitter if you disagree. :-D
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Jul 24, 2016 17:46
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Jerusalem posted:Count me in as one of the many who loved the series but was disappointed at the obvious rush-job that went into the final works as King's fear of his mortality forced him to push through rather than let it come organically. I love the idea of the movie(s?) as a continuation of the books and the casting for the two leads is pretty loving great. I'm not really familiar with Nikolaj Arcel but I have high hopes that this'll turn out good. Yeah, I think that the period of "rest" he took between The Dark Tower and Wind Through The Keyhole made the latter so goddamned good. Edit: Despite some problems with it, I believe Book Seven still contains some of King's best writing, period. If you don't bawl like a baby at Oy's death, then you have no soul. Ensign_Ricky fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Jul 25, 2016 |
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Jul 24, 2016 17:58
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So I read through the summary of the Dark Tower series and its is classic 80s fantasy in that it makes like 0 sense to me
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Jul 25, 2016 19:32
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Phi230 posted:So I read through the summary of the Dark Tower series and its is classic 80s fantasy in that it makes like 0 sense to me The series definitely has its own language and you have to get used to the terminology if you're going to understand it. King will explain a concept once, and then just refer back to it constantly but if you don't remember the initial explanation it might we Wiki time.
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Jul 25, 2016 19:40
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Also there's a book called "The Concordance" or something which clears up a lot of stuff due to problems that arose when King started to discard ideas and decided to George Lucas the first book.
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Jul 25, 2016 19:44
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There's a reason why the series has always been considered one of those "unfilmable" stories like Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. Just a ton of poo poo going on and almost all of it completely on the fly; there's no audience surrogate character until you're well into the second book, several hundred pages in. At least Lord of the Rings has Frodo, and Gandalf has to explain certain things to him that serve as exposition to the reader. The Gunslinger just drops you into this fully formed world, and its up to you to decide to continue reading even though you'll have about a hundred unanswered questions by the end. King doesn't slowly feed you satisfying answers to keep you reading, the answers come when they come, and they take their sweet time. At one point in the series he diverts from a life or death situation to tell a novel-length flashback story. The movie is going to have to combine all of these various story points in a creative way if they're going to tell anything close to a coherent story in 2 hours. Of course, to be fair, telling the story out of order from the way it appears in the book series is kinda relevant thematically, so maybe it'll work really well.
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Jul 25, 2016 20:42
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Ensign_Ricky posted:Yeah, I think that the period of "rest" he took between The Dark Tower and Wind Through The Keyhole made the latter so goddamned good. All I remember from the last book is guy with a magic pencil who erases the bad guy, and the bad guy just being a dude yelling SNEETCHES and giggling. Goddamn it was such a loving dumb book.
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Jul 26, 2016 05:14
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I'm currently browsing the general Stephen King thread and I'm about a hundred pages in and I've seen several mentions of a Dark Tower exclusive thread, but no links. I seem to remember having it bookmarked, but I guess when something is archived it drops off of the mobile bookmarks list? A bit sad, I wanted to read fellow goons outlandish theories and see if any of mine matched up!
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Jul 26, 2016 11:16
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My own worst thing from latter books was retconning Maerlyn/Flagg into being the man in black who's no longer dead at the end of the first book instead of his boss. Having never read the rewritten first book, it felt as if he was brought back just to die to a new villain.
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Jul 26, 2016 11:48
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I remember the Crimson King reveal being immensely disappointing, and then the latter books were a series of disappointments. And I even came into things kinda late in the series. I can't imagine waiting all those years for Harry Potter references. King working that van accident into every goddamn thing he did for a while was a method of coping, I get it, but after the first tie-in it wore thin pretty quick. Still excited for this because c'mon, Idris Elba. Anoia fucked around with this message at 14:17 on Oct 28, 2016 |
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Oct 28, 2016 14:14
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The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of putting the whole time loop thing right up front so that it can be used as a storytelling mechanic. I'm not someone who dislikes the ending of the book series, I think its perfect actually, but for a movie/ tv series it will probably work better as an established element known to the audience instead of a twist at the very end. Whether its actually even a "twist" in the books is I guess up for debate, considering King drops many different hints throughout the series that time is cyclical. I figured it out on my own pretty early on when Roland discovers a crashed WWII era bomber in Mid-World.
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Oct 28, 2016 14:38
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MonsieurChoc posted:My own worst thing from latter books was retconning Maerlyn/Flagg into being the man in black who's no longer dead at the end of the first book instead of his boss. Having never read the rewritten first book, it felt as if he was brought back just to die to a new villain. Wait, Flagg wasn't always Walter?
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Oct 28, 2016 15:32
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Wait, Flagg wasn't always Walter? King changed a bunch of things in The Gunslinger in a revised edition because like 20 years had gone by since he'd written it and he had developed the story a lot more in his mind since then. I like the idea of this one specific entity antagonizing Roland for his entire life, so for me its a positive change. But I was never attached to the original version, I started reading the series long after it had been revised by King. Like how the Special Editions of Star Wars never bothered me because its what I grew up with.
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Oct 28, 2016 15:42
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Wait, Flagg wasn't always Walter? In the first version of the first book, Walter talks about his superiors, including Flagg/Maerlyn, and then dies. No mention is made of him having faked his death, and when Maerlyn is introduced in the fourth book it seems as if it's Walter's foreshadowed boss coming into the stage. However, in the rewritten first book, the list of superiors is changed and it's inserted that Walter "obviously" faked his own death. Having never read the new version of the first book, it threw me for a loop.
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Oct 28, 2016 15:45
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Specifically, in the original edition of The Gunslinger, Walter, Marten, Maerlyn, John Farson, and "the Beast" which is the final guardian of the Tower, are all distinct entities. As the series goes on, Flagg is introduced, identified with Marten and with Walter, hinted to be Maerlyn and John Farson, (both of those later clarified) and the Beast is replaced with the Crimson King, though Flagg takes on the story-mechanical role as well.
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Oct 28, 2016 16:55
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I like that change, I think it adds a lot of power to the Flagg character. It takes like 4 different lesser characters and combines them into one uber-important one.
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Oct 28, 2016 16:58
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Basebf555 posted:I like that change, I think it adds a lot of power to the Flagg character. It takes like 4 different lesser characters and combines them into one uber-important one. People complain a lot about the increasing percentage of metafiction as the Dark Tower series moves on, but Randall Flagg being what chaos-magic people call a "fiction suit" starts right in The Waste Lands, as he assumes the role of the devil, but this time in a more dualistic world.
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Oct 28, 2016 17:03
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Flagg having a bigger role also fits thematically parallel with the priest from Salem's Lot working with Roland's Ka. Both sides have fictional characters from other King books working to help their ends. Both characters have great deaths too. Pere Callahan went out like a G in that restaurant shoot out and Flagg being eaten alive by Mordred was gloriously disgusting.
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Oct 28, 2016 17:42
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ruddiger posted:Flagg having a bigger role also fits thematically parallel with the priest from Salem's Lot working with Roland's Ka. Both sides have fictional characters from other King books working to help their ends. I still think Flagg getting gibbed by Mordred was a cop-out. For all his great power it was a chump's death, one I expected by Roland's hand. Or at least someone in the ka-tet. But King needed him out of the picture, and quick. Sad price to finish the story. Oh well, maybe next time!
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Oct 29, 2016 01:55
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Brainiac Five posted:Specifically, in the original edition of The Gunslinger, Walter, Marten, Maerlyn, John Farson, and "the Beast" which is the final guardian of the Tower, are all distinct entities. As the series goes on, Flagg is introduced, identified with Marten and with Walter, hinted to be Maerlyn and John Farson, (both of those later clarified) and the Beast is replaced with the Crimson King, though Flagg takes on the story-mechanical role as well. I believe even originally Farson wasn't even a person but a place.
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Oct 29, 2016 03:15
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Brainiac Five posted:Specifically, in the original edition of The Gunslinger, Walter, Marten, Maerlyn, John Farson, and "the Beast" which is the final guardian of the Tower, are all distinct entities. As the series goes on, Flagg is introduced, identified with Marten and with Walter, hinted to be Maerlyn and John Farson, (both of those later clarified) and the Beast is replaced with the Crimson King, though Flagg takes on the story-mechanical role as well. I prefer the big hierarchy of the original because I wanted to meet all those other characters dangit! 
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Oct 29, 2016 03:46
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I loved the kind of feverish, stream-of-consciousness writing of the first Gunslinger book, even though you could clearly tell King was dropping names all over the place without having characters for them in mind yet. The 'revision' was a pretty bad job, at one point Roland asks Walter "start by explaining what glammer is" even though Walter's line mentioning 'glammer' got removed.
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Oct 29, 2016 06:29
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davidspackage posted:I loved the kind of feverish, stream-of-consciousness writing of the first Gunslinger book, even though you could clearly tell King was dropping names all over the place without having characters for them in mind yet. The 'revision' was a pretty bad job, at one point Roland asks Walter "start by explaining what glammer is" even though Walter's line mentioning 'glammer' got removed. While I've never read the revision, for a long while I disliked the sequels to the Gunslinger because they lacked the stream-of-consciousness of the original. I've come to appreciate them a little more since I first read them, but they are definitely quite a bit different from the original book, and I can understand why King would have rewritten that one to better fit in. It's kind of a shame, though, because the style of the original book was truly fantastic.
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Oct 29, 2016 08:03
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Speaking of the books, I just learned that they're actually going to put out a copy of Charlie the Choo Choo, with art by the guy who did the original illustrations in The Wastelands.
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Oct 29, 2016 16:59
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I have a copy of the original audio-book read by Stephen King himself.... on cassette. I bought it 20-ish years ago. I'm thinking I will never play them again.
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Oct 29, 2016 17:31
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spooky like this! posted:Speaking of the books, I just learned that they're actually going to put out a copy of Charlie the Choo Choo, with art by the guy who did the original illustrations in The Wastelands. Really hope this means that Blaine will be in the movie.
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Oct 29, 2016 22:01
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The leaked proof of concept trailer made this look like "The Avengers" but with Roland running around New York shooting up aliens whilst diving through windows instead of a Hulk jumping around smashing poo poo. edit: I hope it just came across that way, don't get me wrong.
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Oct 29, 2016 22:08
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Best part of the book series is King stopping the story in the last book and literally telling the reader to stop reading and put the book down. And not in a meta way. It's just "and now a special message from the writer." And it's pretty much King acknowledging that it sucks. I wish that warning would have been at the beginning of Doombots of the Calla.
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Oct 30, 2016 14:28
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This series begins as a bit of fun surrealist pulp and then degenerates into a boring muddle of bad ideas poorly implemented by a writer who probably should have stuck to short stories and stand alone novels.There's no way the producers of the film are going to closely follow the structure of the books because actually reproducing the visuals that King describes would be asking way too much of the audience.
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Oct 30, 2016 20:02
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