The Dark Tower incorporates elements from Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger and other novels in the series into a condensed/derivative story for protagonist Roland Deschain, the titular gunslinger (Idris Elba). There’s a Dark Tower that protects various parallel universes, including ours, from a dimension full of demons. The Man in Black (aka Walter, portrayed by Matthew McConaughey) wants to destroy the tower and let the demons in. His plan involves strapping children into a big psychic cannon, painfully extracting their psychic energy, and blasting the tower with it. Roland, once a member of the mystical, knights-of-the-round-table-like order of Gunslingers, is a broken man simply bent on revenge. Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor) is a kid in present day New York with massive psychic ability who sees visions of all of this, but no one believes him, so he is subjected to escalating levels of psychiatric treatment.
