The Dark Tower

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Tart Kitty: Dec 17, 2016; Oh, well, that's all water under the bridge, as I always say. Water under the bridge!

Nah, it was Cujo. He talks about being so blitzed on drugs and alcohol that he doesn't remember writing it in On Writing. Though I think it's safe to say some of those issues likely played a part in the issues with Tommyknockers as well.

Ha, that factoid is actually part of the books entry on Wikipedia.

# ? Sep 6, 2017 20:28

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# ? Apr 29, 2024 05:19

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

GoingPostal posted:

It was Cujo? Huh. I'd heard it was Tommyknockers, which I'd believed due to how much of a mess that book is.

Even in my fanboy phase I could tell Tommyknockers was poo poo.

Cujo was good though. Coked up Steve is a good Steve.

# ? Oct 14, 2017 16:56

Guy Mann: Mar 28, 2016; by Lowtax

Tommyknockers is a bunch of cool ideas that fail to form a good cohesive whole. The part of the book when alien transformation gas turns a bunch of different townspeople into weird crazy tech savants and it materializes in different ways but always ruins their lives (the kid who is really into magic and builds a vanishing man trick that teleports his brother into outer space, the religious woman who turns her TV into a bomb because Jesus tells her to, a floating malicious Coke machine patrolling the city) is up there with No Great Loss from The Stand in terms of incredibly memorable one-shot character moments from King.

# ? Oct 15, 2017 01:38

Old Kentucky Shark: May 25, 2012; If you think you're gonna get sympathy from the shark, well then, you won't.

Guy Mann posted:

Tommyknockers is a bunch of cool ideas that fail to form a good cohesive whole. The part of the book when alien transformation gas turns a bunch of different townspeople into weird crazy tech savants and it materializes in different ways but always ruins their lives (the kid who is really into magic and builds a vanishing man trick that teleports his brother into outer space, the religious woman who turns her TV into a bomb because Jesus tells her to, a floating malicious Coke machine patrolling the city) is up there with No Great Loss from The Stand in terms of incredibly memorable one-shot character moments from King.

Stephen King is at both his best and his worst when he is channeling pure 50's era EC comics, and that's 90% of the Tommyknockers.

# ? Oct 15, 2017 19:43

Owlbear Camus: Jan 3, 2013; Maybe this guy that flies is just sort of passing through, you know?

Still can't get over how this turned into such a soul-less mess of a film that went through a nightmarish production, when it could have been such a good movie as a faithful adaptation of The Gunslinger.

Like the books get insanely unfilmable later in the series but the first one is 100% totally perfect as basically a screenplay as-written with a really modest budget. Could have been made in the 80's and been good.

# ? Oct 16, 2017 17:15

Junkenstein: Oct 22, 2003

I really hated how they changed some things I'd have thought were pretty intrinsic (like, erm, changing Roland's obsession with the tower to him not giving a gently caress about it), while including some cutsey easter egg references.

Like what the hell was the point of the 'Man in black fled across the desert.....' voice-over when that is the last thing Walter does in the film?

# ? Oct 16, 2017 17:36

Tart Kitty: Dec 17, 2016; Oh, well, that's all water under the bridge, as I always say. Water under the bridge!

Pac-Manioc Root posted:

Still can't get over how this turned into such a soul-less mess of a film that went through a nightmarish production, when it could have been such a good movie as a faithful adaptation of The Gunslinger.

Like the books get insanely unfilmable later in the series but the first one is 100% totally perfect as basically a screenplay as-written with a really modest budget. Could have been made in the 80's and been good.

The thing that sucks is that by setting it in the "horn cycle," after the books, the producers basically had free reign to shuffle, compact, or expand elements of story as necessary. All of the later, bonkers rear end stuff could have been massaged to be more palatable, of explored from different angles.

They just lacked patience. Instead of just adapting The Gunslinger and calling it an easy win, they felt the need to like, completely alter the basic narrative thrust of the entire story, and do a half-assed "greatest hits" movie, which conveniently left to greatests of the hits for the ~sequels~.They had a franchise, and they shot themselves in the dick by tripping on the first step.

# ? Oct 16, 2017 23:50

got any sevens: Feb 9, 2013; by Cyrano4747

A lot of movies have done that this decade, putting the cart before the horse and then the first movie bombs so no sequels

# ? Oct 17, 2017 00:01

henpod: Mar 7, 2008; Sir, we have located the Bioweapon.; College Slice

Film was ka-ka.

# ? Oct 17, 2017 10:14

Der Luftwaffle: Dec 29, 2008

Maybe I'm in a charitable mood but I felt that the directing wasn't that bad, the fight scenes were pretty good, and the visuals were great. Taken on it's own, I guess it's an ok action/adventure movie since Idris is rock-solid enough to anchor it.

But it's also impossible to pretend that it exists in a vacuum. May not have been offensively bad, but definitely a weak-rear end rush job.

# ? Oct 19, 2017 06:17

DirtyRobot: Dec 15, 2003; it was a normally happy sunny day... but Dirty Robot was dirty

Junkenstein posted:

I really hated how they changed some things I'd have thought were pretty intrinsic (like, erm, changing Roland's obsession with the tower to him not giving a gently caress about it), while including some cutsey easter egg references.

Like what the hell was the point of the 'Man in black fled across the desert.....' voice-over when that is the last thing Walter does in the film?

Pac-Manioc Root posted:

Still can't get over how this turned into such a soul-less mess of a film that went through a nightmarish production, when it could have been such a good movie as a faithful adaptation of The Gunslinger.

Like the books get insanely unfilmable later in the series but the first one is 100% totally perfect as basically a screenplay as-written with a really modest budget. Could have been made in the 80's and been good.

Honestly, it just feels like an adaptation written by Akiva Goldsman, the guy behind Winter's Tale, iRobot, Lost in Space, I Am Legend -- and now, The Dark Tower. When his films aren't terrible, they are -- at best -- sterile, milquetoast oscar bait (e.g., A Beautiful Mind). For adaptations, he takes a few broad strokes from the source material, then for the rest he is very quick to say, "Oh, no, that doesn't work in film you see... I'll just change that to [whatever]" and from there he produces a kind of by-the-numbers Hollywood film that manages to tick off all the boxes of "How to Write Screenplays for Dummies" but at the end of the day still manages to completely suck.

I mean, sure, obviously when you adapt a book to a film you need to make changes. And no, a film adaptation of a book is not judged on its adherence to the source material. Lots of excellent films are very, very different from the book, and they're excellent because they're very different from the book. Sometimes this is because the changes were necessary due to the change in medium, and sometimes it's because the writer and/or director is just doing really interesting things and they have their own vision. Cool.

But Goldsman's changes are just... consistently weird. He takes cool and good things, and then asks, "How can I take this thing that is cool and unique and make it as uninteresting as possible?"

DirtyRobot fucked around with this message at 14:33 on Oct 19, 2017

# ? Oct 19, 2017 14:24

Tart Kitty: Dec 17, 2016; Oh, well, that's all water under the bridge, as I always say. Water under the bridge!

Without hyperbole, I think Akiva Goldsman is in like, the top three of the worst major Hollywood screenwriters today. Despite making a career of it, the man simply seems to have no grasp on compelling characterization or narrative. The fact that he consistently has his hands in so many pies of such significant size is just mindblowing.

# ? Oct 19, 2017 15:05

Big Bad Voodoo Lou: Jan 1, 2006

I was surprised Fringe was as good as it was, with him in such a hands-on role.

# ? Oct 19, 2017 16:05

ZorajitZorajit: Sep 15, 2013; No static at all...

I think I get why Goldsman continues to be employed on projects as high profile as those he's had a turn at. He makes things that, on paper, look presentable. I, Robot (or the script it was before the studio found out it had a random Asimov license kicking around), I am Legend, and now Dark Tower were all well known but also known for being full of weird ideas. So if you're speculating on movies to back, the Goldsman comes to you with a treatment for a a AAA property and a script that turns it into something that can run on TBS for my parents after its theater run.

# ? Oct 19, 2017 16:27

Owlbear Camus: Jan 3, 2013; Maybe this guy that flies is just sort of passing through, you know?

In an age where Ant Man and guardians of the galaxy get greenlit, I don't think The Gunslinger is that weird of a pitch.

"A guy who's like a combination old west lawman and knight chases an evil wizard in a fantasy world. Along the way he has to battle a mind-controlled town, savage mutants, and a demon bound to standing stones. He befriends a boy from our world, and in the climax he shows that he is bound to duty over love by chosing to pursue the wizard instead of saving the boy from peril."

It's a really simple, linear narrative with a handful of fairly prosaic setpieces. The only remotely hard part to adapt would be the paliver on the beach.

The problem is they put the cart before the horse and wanted to do a remix of everything, where when you want to kitchen sink all the books together yeah it does get really wild and difficult to film.

# ? Oct 19, 2017 16:45

Darko: Dec 23, 2004

I just randomly ran across someone's summary of Goldman's original script, before it was chopped up, on Reddit. Apparently the script is there as well, but I didn't bother to look for it:

quote:

Read it in its entirety, Kepler said a lot BUT FULL BREAKDOWN BELOW !
It has sort of a similar structure to the finished film but I think many would be astounded by how good this draft is. Could it be done on 60 million? Probably not, we see more of Mid-World, passages would have been CG heavy, we see the Crimson King, etc,etc. I think they could have made that film with 80-90 million.

Seriously, Goldsman is not a hack here, he gets it, we still have that opening in Devar Toi that I'm no fan of, but he explained how they needed to foreground that aspect. The conflict with Jake is established, same deal with the psychiatrist (exposition time), necessary evil, the mom seems much more removed, there's no neighbor.

Immediately, we find ourselves with Roland in Tull, and that whole section is extremely close to the Gunslinger, Allie is here, Roland lays with her, Nort brought back to life by Walter, Walter being Walter with great dialogue sticking close to the page (which is maddening when you see the dialogue Matt is stuck with), he ends up influencing the whole town to turn on Roland, which makes it acceptable for Roland to shoot all of them.

It intercuts between this, Devar Toi, where there's Pimli AND Finli, and they're both in masks or in their natural forms, no crappy human Pimli, Jake's NY and Roland.

Roland falls at some point during the shooting, similar to the book. He walks off, reaches a beach AND LOBSTROCITY ATTACK ! they actually come out of some thinny, they attack him, one snaps off two of his fingers, and he's poisoned.
Jake pulls a gun on the low-men, his step father and mom when the low-men show, he gets out, goes to Dutch Hill, the guardian is much closer to the book, lasts longer, and there is no portal ! it's similar to The Drawing, where the door is part of the guardian and he manages to go through.

Jake actually gets to Mid-World much later than in the film, PATIENCE ! when he gets there, he shows up in the stone circle, he sees a mutie deer, there's a gas station, many more relics of the past, the world feels more realized, but hey, writing on the page is one thing when you don't have the budget in mind.

He finds Roland by spying on him, Roland surprises him from behind, NO MENTION of Walter, Jake drew the MIB but he doesnt really know what he looks like and there's no moment where Roland thinks Jake is like an agent of Walter's or something. They walk together, Roland has more dialogue, but yeah, it IS Roland (not that he isnt in the film, but even moreso). There's the theme park scene, except they sleep in separate places, Roland is his usual self, pretends not to care. Jake hears the thinny, his dad,except it's all much more elaborate in terms of scenery. Where the film, for budget reason, has him finding his dad in a forest ; here, he walks on the tarmac, to what was an old airport.
Roland actually places bullets in his ears !!!! to go and get him, Jake sees through the thinny, and sees New York City, his dad telling him similar things (except his dad here died ten years earlier, poisoned after 9/11), Roland starts blasting, NYC disappears and creatures appear through the membrane, he keeps shooting and it disappears, there's no creature like in the film.

They get to the Manni village, it's different, the structures are dome-like, the wise woman telepath is here an old lady, Roland talks of how he abandoned the Dark Tower, a futile quest to focus on something more achievable: vengeance. BUT despite saying that, Jake catches him looking up at the sky a few times, hoping to see the clouds following the path of the beam.

That part feels heavily inspired by The Wolves Of The Calla, Roland dances the Commala ! and because of his fever, his dance partner is replaced by Susan ! Jake & the wise woman both see her, Roland pretends nothing has happened. There is no shootout, no low-men, instead, one of the beams breaks and we see the effects: vegetation, life dying, a part of the village as well, people frozen in place, turning to "glassy ash". Roland collapses, they try to cure him, Jake suggests to take him to NYC through the portal.

By the way, the portals are only shown once if I'm correct, better than just showing Walter going wherever he wants. By that time, Roland STILL doesn't care about Jake, or he pretends not to. They go to NYC, Walter visited Jake's mom & step father prior (no cooking scene). Similar fish out of the water feel here, similar dialogue, but closer to The Drawing. No emergency room, Jake just gets him medicine, he pops it, feels better.
They go to the apartment, Roland has a bad feeling, Jake understands, and he sees what happened with the touch, like instant replay, he starts crying uncontrollably, Roland does his hypnosis thing with the bullet ! to calm him down, puts him to bed.

They look for places selling ammo, BUT Roland leaves Jake behind, he does that by hypnotizing him a second time. Roland goes to buy anmo (and the scene is so close to the hilarious bit in The Drawing where Roland does the same). Jake follows him thanks to the touch/shining.

Walter confronts Roland in the store, like in the movie, but low-men and vampires show up to take Jake, here, it sticks close to the film, except of course THE ENDING. Roland goes to take Jake who's strapped on but Jake sends him a command: "There are other worlds than these", "Roland, don't". There is no confrontation with Walter. Roland understands and shoots Jake through the portal, it says the blood on the boy's chest resembles a rose !

Jake dies, Roland bows in front of what is know a wall, in respect, I think he says "Hile, Gunslinger". Roland comes back to the Manni village, him and the wise woman talk about Jake, his quest, we clearly see the path of a beam in the sky, people in the village are hopeful about him possibly saving this world.

He goes back to walking in the desert, then there is this cool moment where we zoom out, and see a globe with Roland on it, another where Walter is staked to a cross ! etc etc, and we zoom out further to show the Crimson King, he's described as both spidery I think & human, he howls with rage. We end with Roland. drawing cards (he did so before in the script), suddenly, he draws "THE BOY", he sorta smiles, surprised, and says something like "so it is". Boom, the end.
I'm stunned, this would have been an excellent film. Also, Lud is namedropped, so is Cuthbert, there's no flashback or anything. OH and we get the classic door standing in the middle of nowhere when Roland comes out of the Dixie Pig and goes to the Manni village.

# ? Oct 19, 2017 20:04

Der Luftwaffle: Dec 29, 2008

Fuuuuuuck. I'd have watched the hell out of that. Feel like the fanbase of the books would have been large enough to justify a fittingly higher budget.

# ? Oct 20, 2017 05:44

henpod: Mar 7, 2008; Sir, we have located the Bioweapon.; College Slice

That all sounds mad as hell, no idea how they could have done that and not made it confusing as hell unless they had about 100m more and another hour...goddamn was the final result a dry turkey.

# ? Oct 20, 2017 09:25

Junkenstein: Oct 22, 2003

Is it confirmed real? It doesn't sound real.

# ? Oct 20, 2017 12:20

Vorgen: Mar 5, 2006; Party Membership is a Democracy, The Weave is Not.

A fledgling vampire? How about a dragon, or some half-kobold druids? Perhaps a spontaneous sex change? Anything that can happen, will happen the results will be beyond entertaining.

Just saw the movie. One part I laughed my rear end off about was Roland asking Jake if there were guns in his world, and if bullets were as rare there as they were here. Jake replies, "You're gonna like Earth. A lot." with a little nod. Great line.

Otherwise the movie felt like a saturday morning cartoon plagiarizing ideas from a much better piece of intellectual property.

# ? Oct 20, 2017 12:21

Darko: Dec 23, 2004

Junkenstein posted:

Is it confirmed real? It doesn't sound real.

Yeah, it's real. It just got extremely truncated and studio interfered with for the final version.

# ? Oct 20, 2017 16:00

Tart Kitty: Dec 17, 2016; Oh, well, that's all water under the bridge, as I always say. Water under the bridge!

Darko posted:

Yeah, it's real. It just got extremely truncated and studio interfered with for the final version.

I remember reading a postmortem that said one of the major problems with the film is that it was some kind of weird joint-production, and every company working on it had absolute veto powers. So if someone didn't like a bit of casting, set design, whatever, the whole deal would have to go back to the board. That synopsis gets one thing extremely right over the released film: like the books, it's weird as gently caress. I can see that veto hammer dropping more than once because of it.

# ? Oct 20, 2017 16:42

Vakal: May 11, 2008

One of the things that bothered me the most was the sound of Roland's guns. Half the time they either barely made a noise when fired, or sounded like a muffled 9mm going off.

# ? Oct 22, 2017 04:28

Good Soldier Svejk: Jul 5, 2010

So glad they decided to open with twenty minutes of boring-rear end New York troubled kid's life rather than any number of interesting things they could've done by framing around Roland.

Also McConaughey is menacing but isn't played with that glee that I expected. It's a bit disappointing. I feel like maybe it was some poor directing to not have him go full McConaughey with the role.

Elba is fine. I think he does the character justice but changing his intrinsic motivation is a weird decision.

The sets are cool. Everyone is dressed too nicely though.

My fiance (who didn't read the books) seems to enjoy it well enough but I'm overall pretty disappointed with the choices they've made.

Good Soldier Svejk fucked around with this message at 15:31 on Nov 4, 2017

# ? Nov 4, 2017 14:53

CornHolio: May 20, 2001; Toilet Rascal

I rented this last night and I'm angry.

I've never read the Dark Tower series but have always been intrigued by it. And conceptually, I think there's some cool stuff there. I thought the acting was good and I love both Elba and McConaughey. I loved their characters. The movie could have been so much better than it was. To screw up such a good idea with such good actors takes skill. I don't know if I should blame the script or the director or what, but Jesus Christ what a clusterfuck. Its only saving grace is that it is an hour and a half long.

edit: reading the rest of the thread it sounds like a combination of things. I'm legit sad for what could have been.

# ? Nov 6, 2017 17:19

Vorgen: Mar 5, 2006; Party Membership is a Democracy, The Weave is Not.

A fledgling vampire? How about a dragon, or some half-kobold druids? Perhaps a spontaneous sex change? Anything that can happen, will happen the results will be beyond entertaining.

I tried to describe the differences between this movie and the books to my brother, who hasn't read them. In the end i summarized it as the entire movie is like a trailer for the book series. Things are just so condensed and glossed over that's basically the only way to talk about it.

# ? Nov 10, 2017 08:47

Phylodox: Mar 30, 2006; College Slice

Saw this. Massively disappointing. They churned out an underwhelming YA slog. This felt more like a boring, confused Maze Runner knock-off than anything related to the books.

# ? Nov 27, 2017 03:11

unstucker: Jan 4, 2018

Really liked the book and expected the film would be exciting, but was dissapointed. The plot and idea of the book were changed, the atmosphere of the book was not conveyed(

# ? Feb 23, 2018 08:05

Davros1: Jul 19, 2007; You've got to admit, you are kind of implausible

Still trying for a TV show:

https://tvseriesfinale.com/tv-show/dark-tower-stephen-king-series-coming-amazon/

# ? Feb 24, 2018 12:46

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Davros1 posted:

Still trying for a TV show:

https://tvseriesfinale.com/tv-show/dark-tower-stephen-king-series-coming-amazon/

As long as they forget the movie exists...

# ? Feb 24, 2018 19:26

Ugly In The Morning: Jul 1, 2010; Pillbug

Yeah, they could adapt 1-4 for dirt cheap (3 might get a bit pricey with the Lud stuff, I guess.)

# ? Feb 24, 2018 19:34

Mister Kingdom: Dec 14, 2005; And the tears that fall
On the city wall
Will fade away
With the rays of morning light

Ugly In The Morning posted:

Yeah, they could adapt 1-4 for dirt cheap (3 might get a bit pricey with the Lud stuff, I guess.)

It would be easy to CGI New York into Luid.

# ? Feb 24, 2018 19:52

GORDON: Jan 1, 2006; by Fluffdaddy

unstucker posted:

Really liked the book and expected the film would be exciting, but was dissapointed. The plot and idea of the book were changed, the atmosphere of the book was not conveyed(

I also saw it recently, as a fan of the books.

It made me wonder how the people who made the movie managed to miss the point so completely. It's like they made a movie based on a description of the books as described to them by their 9 year old nephew. Just a travesty.

# ? Feb 25, 2018 03:37

Tart Kitty: Dec 17, 2016; Oh, well, that's all water under the bridge, as I always say. Water under the bridge!

I mentioned it earlier in the thread, but I read that one of the main issues with production is that Sony and Imagine both had absolute veto power on the film. That meant that when it came to anything from casting, to concept art, to even how the trailer was cut, if one of the production companies disliked it, they had to completely go back to the drawing board. The Dark Tower feels like a movie that was committeed to hell when you're watching it, and as it turns out, that was literally the case.

# ? Feb 25, 2018 04:05

Krispy Wafer: Jul 26, 2002; I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat; Grimey Drawer

It sounds like Sony wanted a property that'd spawn multiple TV and movie titles and maybe interconnect with other King universes so they micromanaged the first movie to a fault.

Everyone wants another Marvel, but no one knows how to. Well, I do know one secret - put more than one joke in the movie.

# ? Feb 25, 2018 04:33

DirtyRobot: Dec 15, 2003; it was a normally happy sunny day... but Dirty Robot was dirty

In all honesty the weird visuals of American Gods actually seems pretty perfect for the tone of Dark Tower, especially if you start out with a basic Western premise ("The man in black fled across the..." etc.) and then from there slowly descend into hosed up Midworld weirdness.

Yo Bezos, do that.

# ? Feb 25, 2018 12:04

Groovelord Neato: Dec 6, 2014

they shoulda just made gunslinger a movie.

# ? Feb 25, 2018 17:55

Owlbear Camus: Jan 3, 2013; Maybe this guy that flies is just sort of passing through, you know?

Groovelord Neato posted:

they shoulda just made gunslinger a movie.

Seriously that novel could basically be used as-is as a screenplay and be good.

# ? Feb 25, 2018 18:21

Phylodox: Mar 30, 2006; College Slice

Pac-Manioc Root posted:

Seriously that novel could basically be used as-is as a screenplay and be good.

I don�t think a movie like that could be made today, especially not by a major studio, especially especially not based on a property like The Dark Tower. The Gunslinger would need to be an Italian film from the 70s (like Sergio Leone and Dario Argento�s bastard love child) or pure 80s DTV schlock.

# ? Feb 26, 2018 03:53

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# ? Apr 29, 2024 05:19

got any sevens: Feb 9, 2013; by Cyrano4747

Krispy Wafer posted:

It sounds like Sony wanted a property that'd spawn multiple TV and movie titles and maybe interconnect with other King universes so they micromanaged the first movie to a fault.

Everyone wants another Marvel, but no one knows how to. Well, I do know one secret - put more than one joke in the movie.

Everyone keeps putting the shared universe cart before the individual good movie horse

# ? Feb 26, 2018 04:41

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