• cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 day ago

    The Dark Tower. Good movie in its own right, especially if you like Idris Elba.

    First, they took 8 Stephen King books, some of which were like 2" thick, and decided to turn it into a 90-minute PG-13 film. A single film.

    Second, because the racist element was so offensive (a Black woman taken out of the 1970s, who has personally experienced racism toward her, is taken to a foreign world, an alternate reality, where she basically is led by an old white man (modeled after Clint Eastwood) and naturally she feels a certain type of way about that) they decided they were going to change it up. Make her white, and him Black. Hence casting Idris Elba as a guy based on Clint Eastwood. Then they dropped her character entirely. I will argue that Elba made a hell of a Gunslinger, but the reason they cast him was because they wanted to turn the whole racism plot on its head. For no good reason. It was fine in the books (this would be The Drawing of the Three, and The Waste Lands, the second and third books).

    But for all that, it was an entertaining action flick with a bunch of Stephen King references. I quite like it. As a reader of the books and a fan of Stephen King, I shouldn’t, but the movie itself was good.

    Honestly that the movie exists at all is the worst change, though.

    • magnetosphere@fedia.io
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      1 day ago

      Idris Elba was an unexpected choice, but I was all for it. Unfortunately, you’re right about the rest of the film. SO much wasted potential.

    • snooggums@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      I only read the first three or four books, but the movie didn’t include a single thing I remember from thee early books that I liked. No crab taking fingers, no giant robot bear, no talking train, or anything else. It seemed to me like they had some other script and slapped a Dark Tower veneer on it.

      • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        I realized there was trouble when the producers were being interviewed and stated they had a hard time finding an entry point to the universe and I was like “Bitch, FIRST LINE - ‘The man in black fled across the desert and the Gunslinger followed.’”

        • UnculturedSwine@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          3 hours ago

          It’s always a treat realizing that you like a piece of fiction much more than the director/producer making an adaptation of it. I’m glad I didn’t bother with that film.

      • the_crotch@sh.itjust.works
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        16 hours ago

        McConaughy was fucking perfect for Walter. The casting was great. Its a shame they didn’t get to make a dark tower movie, just a dark tower themed move.

        LOL 19 GET IT??? There’s your fan service and now back to our regularly scheduled mediocre tripe

      • cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        22 hours ago

        No, no, Dennis Haysbert was good in it as the father Roland never forgot the face of, though I don’t remember his father being in the books. Seeing President Palmer teach Luther the gunslinger creed was awesome to me.