Utterly Mad

For those of you who didn't read it, The Dark Tower is a series of 7 (+1) books by Stephen King detailing the trials and tribulations of the last gunslinger Roland Deschain as he journeys to the dark tower though a post apocalyptic/scifi/fantasy/western setting. It's a very good series of books.

A few years back, universal studios announced that they were working on a series of three movies and a TV series centered on the book series... Until they canceled the project so they could throw money at the shitty "battleship" movie, and the likewise shitty "47 Ronin." They poured almost 400 million dollars into those two movies, both of which were panned by critics. As it turns out though, The Dark Tower has, as of last year I guess, been picked up by sony pictures.

Here's what I know. The movie appears to encompass all seven books. The movies cast appears to be lacking many important characters, including most of the main characters. The movies cast appears to include characters who were unimportant for the most part in the books as main characters in the movie. For example, "tirana" who was a vampire promptly shot in the head and never mentioned before or after in the sixth book is now a main character. The man directing the movie has directed five other movies, those movies received reviews ranging between 4 to 7 out of ten for quality. Idris Elba is Roland Deschain, which brings me too...

Idris Elba is black, Roland Deschain was based off of "the man with no name" (clint eastwood). Roland Deschain is white. White washing is a problem in some movies *cough* gods of egypt *cough* but it does go both ways. I don't give a shit about the race or gender of a character in a movie, but if you are going to base your movie off of a book or something like that, for gods sake cast appropriate actors. Idris Elba, who is a fine actor, is not an appropriate match for Roland Deschain, just as the collection of white people they got to play most of the characters in gods of egypt weren't the appropriate cast for that (shitty) movie. Any of the people who had been considered for the role before universal canned the project would have been great. Javier Bardem, Russel Crowe, Viggo Mortenson, or Liam Neeson.

The above is a relatively minor thing though. Whats more concerning is the complete rewrite of the script and seemingly cut characters/story elements. You can't take seven books and compress them into a single movie without some serious butchery. What worries me even more is that Stephen King is on board with this movie, and has in the past spoken out against such butchery of his work. Will I end up relegating him to the same bin where that hypocrite lying fuck George Lucas is kept? I hope not.

I have this horrible feeling that when this movie comes out in 2017, I am going to be fucking furious. Hopefully, I'm wrong, but in the best case scenario is that it will be a decent movie that should not have "The Dark Tower" stapled to it.

You should read the books Perigrin, they are good. Better than a lot of Stephen Kings other stuff, and King wrote some good stuff.