{"id":225,"date":"2017-08-06T18:55:37","date_gmt":"2017-08-07T01:55:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/?p=225"},"modified":"2018-09-20T12:40:32","modified_gmt":"2018-09-20T19:40:32","slug":"dark-tower-like-watching-people-dont-know-play-dungeons-dragons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/2017\/08\/06\/dark-tower-like-watching-people-dont-know-play-dungeons-dragons\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dark Tower<\/em> \u2013 Like Watching People You Don\u2019t Know Play Dungeons and Dragons"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Dark Tower<\/span> incorporates elements from Stephen King\u2019s The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger<\/span> and other novels in the series into a condensed\/derivative story for protagonist Roland Deschain, the titular gunslinger (Idris Elba). There\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

That\u2019s basically it as far as story goes. The Bad Guy wants to do Bad Things. The Wonder\/Chosen Child of the Month is the key. The Fallen Hero trudges through his redemption arc. But the whole thing plays out like watching some random strangers play Dungeons and Dragons. There\u2019s the one guy who\u2019s really into his character and puts a lot of effort into role playing (Elba), the guy who just blandly plays his stat sheet (Taylor), and the guy who you\u2019re not quite sure what he\u2019s trying to do (McConaughey). They play through a bunch of standard linear quests. The non-player characters are little more than disposable props who show up just long enough to advance the (thin) story with about a paragraph\u2019s worth of description\/development. And how can we have an adventure without an orc attack? Finally, the script calls for them to reach the finale. It looks bad for the heroes, but one guy declares a ridiculous called shot, impossible even by the game\u2019s very loose laws of physics. The game master lets him roll for it anyway, and wouldn\u2019t you know, he gets a natural 20.<\/p>\n

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You can usually count on Jackie Earle Haley to at least inject an entertaining level of menace or weirdness into his character, but even he phoned in his portrayal of Sayre, the leader of bunch of guys working for Walter for some reason.<\/p>\n

Much of the story is inexplicable, like Walter\u2019s determination to destroy the Dark Tower. It\u2019s the central element of the plot, but it\u2019s never made clear why he wants to do this. He\u2019s nigh omnipotent as it is, and he can travel the worlds at will. We\u2019re never told what he hoped to gain by setting the demons loose. Presumably, if I had read all the novels, I\u2019d understand why he was trying to destroy the tower, and maybe I\u2019d care more about the characters. But I didn\u2019t read the novels, so I don\u2019t, and I don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

The movie\u2019s biggest sin is that it manages to be boring, especially in what\u2019s supposed to be the climactic confrontation. Superhuman revolver tricks were cool during the 2-minute trailer, but got old over the movie\u2019s 95-minute runtime.<\/p>\n

Potentially useful safety tip: If you are poisoned by a demon and on the verge of death, antibiotics will clear that right up for you.<\/p>\n

Overall rating: 4.5\/10<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Dark Tower incorporates elements from Stephen King\u2019s 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\u2019s a Dark Tower that protects various parallel universes, including ours, from a dimension full of demons. The Man in Black (aka Walter, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":226,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[85,88,86,84,87],"class_list":["post-225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","tag-idris-elba","tag-jackie-earle-haley","tag-matthew-mcconaughey","tag-the-dark-tower","tag-tom-taylor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":590,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions\/590"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}