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Rap Record Hoarder posted:Is it me or is the ad campaign for this not really as robust as it should be? I saw a trailer for DT played in front of Baby Driver this weekend and even as someone who is a fan of the books and will (probably) see this in theaters, I had no idea when the actual release was. For whatever reason I thought this was getting released in October or November, not the August movie dumping period. They are not doing a good job with it. It will not be good.
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Jul 4, 2017 00:10
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Fart City posted:Which apparently won't be the case in the movie because the rights to The Stand are held by another studio. Which sucks. Though suitably enough, didn't that most recent attempt to remake The Stand also cast McConaughey as Flagg?
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Jul 4, 2017 02:52
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BlindSite posted:I felt wizard and glass was the strongest book by a wide margin so I'm pretty keen for that. I was big on Wolves of the Calla. The new Ka-tet gets to do their whole "strangers roll into town and clean up the baddies" Wild West bit, only there's Doombots, snitches and lightsabers.
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Jul 5, 2017 03:31
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Filthy Casual posted:I was big on Wolves of the Calla. The new Ka-tet gets to do their whole "strangers roll into town and clean up the baddies" Wild West bit, only there's Doombots, snitches and lightsabers. Yes, and I know I've posted this before, Oy stands up and does a bow and I nearly vomited all over myself from the saccharine.
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Jul 12, 2017 19:58
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Chairman Capone posted:Though suitably enough, didn't that most recent attempt to remake The Stand also cast McConaughey as Flagg? Not sure. But that would be a pretty sly way of getting around the rights issue.
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Jul 13, 2017 18:15
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Wolves of the Calla was "okay." It suffered a lot from fans for the long gap after 4 and not "advancing" to the Tower much from there. But as Stephen King's Magnificent Seven Samurai Amigos, it was a decent aside, with some weird touches that ended up taking over and being the worst parts of 6/7.
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Jul 13, 2017 18:18
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Darko posted:Wolves of the Calla was "okay." It suffered a lot from fans for the long gap after 4 and not "advancing" to the Tower much from there. But as Stephen King's Magnificent Seven Samurai Amigos, it was a decent aside, with some weird touches that ended up taking over and being the worst parts of 6/7. Pretty crazy that the fans of the series had gone from enjoying the hell out of something like The Gunslinger, to criticizing Wolves of the Calla/Wizard and Glass for not "moving the story along" or whatever. Yea, that's totally what the series is all about, a constantly advancing plot 
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Jul 13, 2017 18:31
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I really enjoyed Wolves of the Calla. But I feel like Song of Susannah was entirely pointless. That is definitely an entry where it felt like nothing happened. I'm not even sure if I remember a single plot point from it, actually.
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Jul 13, 2017 18:45
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Song of Susannah was absolute poo poo. I could not wait for that book to end.
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Jul 13, 2017 19:01
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Chairman Capone posted:I really enjoyed Wolves of the Calla. But I feel like Song of Susannah was entirely pointless. That is definitely an entry where it felt like nothing happened. I'm not even sure if I remember a single plot point from it, actually. That's the full author self-insertion novel.
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Jul 13, 2017 20:31
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So, if I read the Gunslinger and didn't particularly care for it, should I bother with these other books? King himself seems to hate it. He says so in the preface. Would I be very lost if I just picked up Wizard and Glass without having read the other ones?
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Jul 13, 2017 22:05
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Wolves was mostly good, but "no really these aren't just a lot like doombots with lightsabers and snitches, they are literally 100% those things from pop culture" was a bit of a sign that King was not working with metafiction well and the first hint that he wasn't going to execute his own appearance as a character or his ending very well. e: I think King dislikes The Gunslinger because it was his first novel and he sees his own immaturity as a writer when he revisits it. As a reader, it's actually quite enjoyable. Wizard and Glass is a prequel outside of the frame story and you don't really need to have read anything beforehand to understand what is happening. Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 23:08 on Jul 13, 2017 |
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Jul 13, 2017 23:05
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And More posted:So, if I read the Gunslinger and didn't particularly care for it, should I bother with these other books? King himself seems to hate it. He says so in the preface. It would be better if you've read the rest, but you absolutely won't be lost - it's very self contained.
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Jul 14, 2017 00:18
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And More posted:Would I be very lost if I just picked up Wizard and Glass without having read the other ones? So what I'm saying is, if that doesn't make a goddamn lick of sense, just go ahead and skip it and start with the next section.
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Jul 14, 2017 02:57
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LegoMan posted:Yes, and I know I've posted this before, Oy stands up and does a bow and I nearly vomited all over myself from the saccharine. They need to make a sequel just to be drat sure Oy gets an appearance.
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Jul 14, 2017 03:16
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Biggest mistake in the endgame of The Dark Tower is not introducing Mordred sooner. He pops up in the last book, kills one of the most important characters in the entire Kingverse, gets food poisoning, and then gets unceremoniously merc'd. If he had been introduced in Song of Susannah and allowed to actually develop as an actual threat, it could have led to a much more interesting finale, and possibly give readers the big, final confrontation that was more or less sidestepped by the Crimson King.
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Jul 14, 2017 05:49
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Red Oktober posted:It would be better if you've read the rest, but you absolutely won't be lost - it's very self contained. 3Romeo posted:The first seventy or so pages won't have a lot of context except for King's preface (his "Argument"); they're the follow-up to a cliffhanger where Roland (the last gunslinger), Eddie Dean (a heroin addict from 1980 New York), Susannah Dean (his wife, a civil rights activist from the 1960's, who is missing her legs and is actually a hybrid of two personalities, the Hyde of which came from a brick dropped on her head), Jake Chambers (a boy who's died twice and come back from a different, 1970's New York), and Oy (a billy-bumbler, an animal that can kind of talk but is like a raccoon mixed with a Corgi) are on board a pink, bullet-shaped train named Blaine, and are in a riddling contest for their lives. Thanks! I'll give that a shot. 
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Jul 14, 2017 07:28
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And More posted:Thanks! I'll give that a shot. I'd say you show just read the entire series. There's a dip in quality after book 4, as discussed, but it's well worth it anyway because it's cool and crazy and a fun ride. Besides, the backstory won't have nearly the same impact unless you've already been immerses into the universe from the three previous books.
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Jul 14, 2017 10:17
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Yeah, read them in order. The first 4 are really good.
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Jul 14, 2017 13:34
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Fart City posted:Biggest mistake in the endgame of The Dark Tower is not introducing Mordred sooner. He pops up in the last book, kills one of the most important characters in the entire Kingverse, gets food poisoning, and then gets unceremoniously merc'd. If he had been introduced in Song of Susannah and allowed to actually develop as an actual threat, it could have led to a much more interesting finale, and possibly give readers the big, final confrontation that was more or less sidestepped by the Crimson King. Agreed, he's the one part of the overall ending(I guess if we want to consider the entire final book the ending) that I don't think King stuck the landing on. I actually love a lot of the other stuff that most people don't like, but Mordred really was not a satisfying character in any way.
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Jul 14, 2017 13:55
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3Romeo posted:The first seventy or so pages won't have a lot of context except for King's preface (his "Argument"); they're the follow-up to a cliffhanger where Roland (the last gunslinger), Eddie Dean (a heroin addict from 1980 New York), Susannah Dean (his wife, a civil rights activist from the 1960's, who is missing her legs and is actually a hybrid of two personalities, the Hyde of which came from a brick dropped on her head), Jake Chambers (a boy who's died twice and come back from a different, 1970's New York), and Oy (a billy-bumbler, an animal that can kind of talk but is like a raccoon mixed with a Corgi) are on board a pink, bullet-shaped train named Blaine, and are in a riddling contest for their lives. The first 70 pages of so of Wizard and Glass also will be better understood if you've read The Stand.
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Jul 14, 2017 13:56
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Basebf555 posted:Agreed, he's the one part of the overall ending(I guess if we want to consider the entire final book the ending) that I don't think King stuck the landing on. I actually love a lot of the other stuff that most people don't like, but Mordred really was not a satisfying character in any way. Yeah, the last book was basically "evil is not as powerful as it seems," which is a big letdown after 20 different books had universe spanning evils that were Lovecraftian powerful. To write that all off as "Stephen King didn't know what he was writing" and then have each climactic evil being (Flagg, Mordred, Crimson King) culminate in 3 different completely anticlimactic ways was dumb. Also, "IT" if you want to count Dandelo as the Dark Tower's idea of what a "real" version of IT would be like as opposed to the Galactus type being envisioned in the original story. It may have been a point, but it was amazingly unsatisfying. Probably wouldn't be if you JUST read the Dark Tower books, but for people that read them in the time they were written and all the tie-ins that really built up the main story, it really came off as a wet fart.
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Jul 14, 2017 15:09
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Second trailer dropped on July 10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZC5FoJ-cPU They really need to show Matthew McConaughey doing something actually evil rather than just walk and talk pure smugness. The trailers just kind of assume we all know that he's bad because he tells us he is.
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Jul 14, 2017 15:19
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Fried Watermelon posted:Second trailer dropped on July 10 Otoh I'm down for him and Elba chewing huge swaths of cgi scenery, independent of the actual quality of the movie.
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Jul 14, 2017 19:32
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Fried Watermelon posted:Second trailer dropped on July 10 thanks, added to op.
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Jul 14, 2017 21:18
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Hmm he didn't say anything about forgetting the face of your father. Funny how those things stick in your mind.
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Jul 15, 2017 00:15
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Fried Watermelon posted:Second trailer dropped on July 10 It's been awhile since I read the books, but I thought that whenever Roland used his pistols it was a pretty big deal, like something that would only happen once or twice in each novel. From the trailer I'm getting a Star Wars vibe where lightsabres battles were treated with reverence like a samurai duel in the OT, only to become a overused spastic glowstick fest in the prequels.
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Jul 15, 2017 00:58
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LegoMan posted:Hmm he didn't say anything about forgetting the face of your father. Funny how those things stick in your mind. the full rendition is in the first trailer
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Jul 15, 2017 02:31
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Vakal posted:It's been awhile since I read the books, but I thought that whenever Roland used his pistols it was a pretty big deal, like something that would only happen once or twice in each novel. He doesn't have a lot of bullets in the books. I always liked how he explained just how loud they are and what a big deal it was.
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Jul 15, 2017 02:42
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Firstborn posted:He doesn't have a lot of bullets in the books. I always liked how he explained just how loud they are and what a big deal it was. Well, he doesn't have a lot of ammo after his visit to Tull  Hell, I'm trying to remember if there's a moment where Roland genuinely *misses* without having someone bump into him or something.
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Jul 15, 2017 04:41
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Vakal posted:It's been awhile since I read the books, but I thought that whenever Roland used his pistols it was a pretty big deal, like something that would only happen once or twice in each novel. I'm hoping the actual movie will be more low-key than the trailers, but it probably won't not be an action summer blockbuster thing.
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Jul 15, 2017 14:37
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crime fighting hog posted:Hell, I'm trying to remember if there's a moment where Roland genuinely *misses* without having someone bump into him or something. Pretty sure he never does. He kills with is heart after all, when a gunslinger wants you dead you're dead.
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Jul 15, 2017 15:05
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crime fighting hog posted:Well, he doesn't have a lot of ammo after his visit to Tull I think the idea is he has a lot more ammo after they get to Earth? We're probably seeing mostly shots from the action bits, but there will also likely be a lot more of those than a truly faithful adaptation of the books would call for. I'd say my expectations at this point are for a "Constantine," not a great adaptation of the material but hopefully a good movie inspired by it. Hodgepodge fucked around with this message at 15:09 on Jul 15, 2017 |
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Jul 15, 2017 15:06
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I think I've posted this before but the fact that Elba appears to not wear a hat for the entire movie bothers me. I always picture Roland wearing a cowboy hat, and most of the book covers showed him with a hat.
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Jul 15, 2017 15:19
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To be fair, the Dresden Files books show the protagonist wearing a hat, too 
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Jul 15, 2017 23:23
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Basebf555 posted:I think I've posted this before but the fact that Elba appears to not wear a hat for the entire movie bothers me. I always picture Roland wearing a cowboy hat, and most of the book covers showed him with a hat. drat near every one of the books that featured an illustrated cover showed him wearing the hat. It's such a stupidly simple thing to have not included. And I think it's a valid complaint, because it really feels like it encapsulates my current state of frustration over the adaption: it's all right there. It's like they're going out of their way to not use stuff that was inherently cinematic in the source material. I mean, how in the hell is "go then, there are other world's than these" not the primary focus of all of the marketing? It's a perfect synopsis of the core concept of the work as a whole.
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Jul 16, 2017 00:41
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Hodgepodge posted:I think the idea is he has a lot more ammo after they get to Earth? When came through Mort's mind in NYC, he bought a few boxes of ammo, but it seems like he and the others used way more than he bought after the fact.
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Jul 16, 2017 14:53
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possible spoiler for book readers: if this isn't his first round to go to the tower he probably knows to bring more ammo this time
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Jul 17, 2017 16:24
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Fried Watermelon posted:possible spoiler for book readers: He's not really supposed to have concrete memories like that to the point where he could make specific plans based on how things went last time. He just as a vague notion that things are cyclical and "ka is a wheel".
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Jul 17, 2017 16:31
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Basebf555 posted:I think I've posted this before but the fact that Elba appears to not wear a hat for the entire movie bothers me. I always picture Roland wearing a cowboy hat, and most of the book covers showed him with a hat. Are there any passages in the actual books that talk about him wearing a hat? I'm pretty sure he doesn't actually wear one since there is that passage about him having a huge chunk of his hair removed during the bit where they rescue jake from the house that tries to eat him.
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Jul 17, 2017 17:01
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