Stephen King's The Dark Tower has finally arrived in theaters after a long and complicated
journey to the big screen.
However, Hollywood's latest attempt to launch a cinematic universe didn't exactly go as
planned: the movie was widely panned by critics, and opened to a disappointing $19.5 million
haul.
This was still good enough for first place, but the movie's lackluster performance with
critics and audiences can only be seen as a disappointment — for both the studio as
well as for King fans who'd waited years to see the books brought to life.
Here's what went wrong with The Dark Tower's big screen debut.
And a friendly warning: spoilers for both the movies — and the books — lie ahead.
Source material misread
The many, many stories King penned in the Dark Tower universe spanned quite a lot of
plot, but the studio decided to mix and match elements from all of them, which still wound
up being a sequel to the books, rather than an adaptation.
"We actually took the world and sort've stitched it a little bit together, without losing the
promise of greater adventures."
The groundwork was laid at the end of the seventh book of King's saga, when our hero
Roland Deschain finally reaches the top of the Dark Tower and realizes he'd been on this
long journey many times before.
While picking the movie up where the final book leaves off may have seemed like a smart
way for the filmmakers to boil down the novels' epic scale into just one film, it was also
alienating to the hardcore fans who'd been hoping to see the actual events of the novels
themselves play out onscreen.
The Dark Tower also straddled the difficult line of trying to appeal to those who hadn't
read any of the books and those who'd read every word.
That effort to please fans and make the content digestible enough for new audiences simply
didn't work, adding up to a movie that didn't give anyone what they were looking for.
While the movie did a fair job of setting up its central quest story, it failed to sell
the deeper conflicts inherent in the epic journey of the characters and felt incomplete.
Speaking of which …
Run time rut
Nowadays, viewers who walk into big-budget blockbusters expect to be in the theaters
for at least two hours — and often more.
The Dark Tower easily could have filled up this runtime — in fact, it probably would
have helped its awkward attempt to fit so many disparate elements from King's novels
into one movie.
"They have guns and bullets in your world?"
"You're gonna like earth a lot."
Director Nick Arcel, however, decided to instead keep the film at a very tight 95 minutes.
The director said he did this because he saw the film as an "introduction" to the world
of the novels, adding that the movie had a "lean" script that would introduce the basic
ideas of the project without being too overwhelming at first.
While this runtime may have been doable had Arcel chosen to only focus on the first book,
the movie's decision to mix-and-match elements from all of King's books as a pseudo-sequel
meant it had to introduce huge amounts of information while playing out its story.
Although Arcel saw the short runtime as a way to build the world without doing too much,
some saw it as being too brief, leaving the world feeling empty and unfinished.
The movie could have benefitted from an extra 30 minutes of world-building — if not more.
Filmmaking fracas
Arcel wasn't the first director to try his hand at adapting The Dark Tower.
In 2007, J.J. Abrams pulled together his Lost pals Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, who
were also big fans of Stephen King.
But they ended up letting go of the adaptation option because they were too nervous about
messing up the beloved work.
That's when Ron Howard stepped up to the plate with a plan for three movies and a TV series
to to bring the story to life.
The project was set up at Universal Pictures, but the studio pulled the plug on that expensive
idea, and it took three more years for the movie rights to find another home with Media
Rights Capital and Sony Pictures.
But that wasn't the end of the behind-the-scenes drama.
MRC and Sony were reportedly unhappy with an early cut of the film, and considered bringing
in a more experienced director to do another cut.
That cost would've been too high, though, so they shelled out funding for re-shoots
amid creative collisions.
All that infighting led to the release date being pushed back a whopping three times,
which probably tipped fans off to how troubled this production was.
"The tower will fall."
Bad buzz
Whether it was a result of behind-the-scenes tumult or just a strategy, advertising for
The Dark Tower ended up being rather minimal.
The first trailer didn't arrive until early May, three months before the film's release
and was overshadowed by other, more high-profile genre movies.
By being stingy with promotional materials, the studios may have been trying to avoid
over-saturation, but that plan clearly backfired.
Two weeks before its release, it failed to even track in the top 10 movies being talked
about on social media -- despite a largely ignored video game offering — and the only
thing that really got people talking was when critics completely eviscerated the movie.
It's debatable how much influence bad reviews actually have on audiences, but the fact that
this film is dangerously close to a one-digit Rotten Tomatoes rating probably didn't encourage
people who were on the fence about the seeing the pic to buy a ticket.
Turning to TV
The Dark Tower may have been a box office disappointment, but Sony and MRC still seem
to be moving ahead with at least one aspect of the franchise.
While there's no word yet on whether the planned movie sequels will move forward, the TV show
made a major step just before the film was released by adding The Walking Dead's Glen
Mazzara as a showrunner.
The TV series is said to be a prequel to the books, focusing on King's Wizard in Glass
novel.
While that means it'll likely have a different feel than the films, it'll see the return
of Idris Elba's Roland, Tom Taylor's Jake, and others.
It's still very early in that process, but the hiring of Mazzara hints that it could
be getting off the ground soon.
The group is hoping to begin production in 2018, so it looks like The Dark Tower hasn't
fallen just yet.
"You are in very bad shape.
I'm surprised you're even sitting up."
"I'm stronger than most."
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