Everyone HATES The Dark Tower

Comments

8 years ago

[Sigh] Between Mirror's Edge, Deus Ex, Mass Effect, and now this, it seems I'm having to get used to great series with so much potential being brought down by crap sequels and adaptations.

There IS a TV series planned, but..... Firefly was a series too. Look how THAT turned out. :(

AbstractSpaces

8 years ago

What was wrong with Mirror's Edge? I thought it was a perfect evolution of the original.

LHprs

8 years ago

I'm assuming you're referring to Catalyst, which is what I was taking about. I would agree- on a more-or-less technical level. The open world was, while not executed in a way that I would do it, quite good, and the switch to pure cyberpunk was an inspired choice. But what that game did WRONG (that every other example did as well) was only tell half a story. Hell, less than that- it simply set up a story with no guarantee that story would ever get a chance to be told. Mass Effect Andromeda did it, Mirror's Edge Catalyst did it, Deus Ex was literally split in half while in development- all three floated the promise of a full story, while not delivering one IN ITSELF.

Mirror's Edge was the worst in this regard. As long as it took to get that second installment made, and as unlikely as it was that it even happened in the first place, DICE managed to hit the lottery and make that second game. AND THEN ALL IT DID WAS PROMISE "YOU'LL GET ALL THIS COOL STORY IN MIRROR'S EDGE CATALYST 2!!!"

Which is sad, because one, I really enjoyed the gameplay, and two, if you dig into the backstory and worldbuilding, it's REALLY interesting. Too bad the best stuff is buried inside the menus.

farson135

8 years ago

Well .... that sucks. Given the fact that my username is a joke that a friend of mine told, referencing the Dark Tower series, you can probably guess how disappointed I am.

Edit to add; Wait, 19%? Stop putting reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. This is too perfect to screw up.

farson135

8 years ago

Side note, Roland is the main character of the Dark Tower novels. He is a very interesting character, and I have been told that Idris Elba played him well (given what he had to work with). I have also been told that Roland is a side character in the movie, and the main character is Jake. So much for all of that hubub about replacing a white character with a black actor. He got sidelined anyway. They don't even include Susannah (a main character, and a black woman), and replaced her with a bunch of people so obscure they do not even show up in the Dark Tower wiki (I am looking at you Tirana).

_NowakP

8 years ago

The whole idea of a TDT movie has always been nineteen

Obsolete18

8 years ago

All of the critics sound like fucking youtube commenters who think they are significantly more clever than they actually are.

Consumerism

8 years ago

How are ANYONE surprised by this? It is EIGHT BOOKS that are written in an intentionally confusing manner to keep the reader guessing and on their toes trough every book, with a semblance of a conclusion to each book, and they tried to cram it into one 90 minute movie? There is no way in hell that is going to end well.

It's 8 books of 300-400 pages per book (iirc. i can't seem to find any of them right now to check...)

The Lord Of The Rings was roughly 1000 pages for all three books combined and they dedicated 3 hours to each film.

While The Dark Tower contains a lot of "They walked trough the desert." and meaningless scenes for the overall plot, you still can't put 3200 pages of source material into 90 minutes and expect a comprehensive outcome.

farson135

8 years ago

The movie is a sequel to the books. It could have worked if it became a fan movie. That is, we fans know the basics. Skip all of the world building, and character development. Just tell us how this attempt turns out. It would still need to be longer than 90 minutes, but it could work in one movie.

Don't get me wrong, I did not expect it to go well. My misgivings started with the long development cycle. It continued with the plot changes, hiring a director I never heard of, and on. Idris Elba was an interesting choice, but I wondered at the time if he was chosen to give the movie some star power. In hindsight, it seems odd to hire a star, then make him a side character to some kid.

_NowakP

8 years ago

When the film was first announced, I think they were planning to do a sequel to the original books but follow them more closely in sequence and do a series. I stopped following any TDT news so I wouldn't know anything about the movie, now I'm finding out that they basically crammed bits and pieces of the world and characters into a single movie and wrapped it up with a non-sensical story without any character depth which is pretty sad, because TDT is mostly the characters.

The book series is so damn slow because of world building and character development and it's just damn cool. I'll watch the movie nevertheless and hope for the TV series to be at least "average".

It's also kind of odd to make the Man In Black the main "end-all" villain when he turned out to be "all talk" in the actual books...

colespock

8 years ago

It should have been a show of some kind. I think HBO or Netflix would have been great for it.

Jikininki

8 years ago

Well its a good thing that I don't let anyone decided for me if I will like a movie, game, show, or music. If I go to see a movie and I didn't think it was that good oh well. I could careless what a bunch of reviewers on rotten tomatoes thought of it.

melodiousSunder

8 years ago

I was visiting Dallas this weekend and I saw this with my friends. I have to agree with all the reviews on "The Dark Tower". I never read the books keep in mind. I didn't even know what it was about. I just walked in completely blind and I walked out feeling like "What the fuck just happened?" It was way too rushed and the villian wasn't actually that intimidating to me at all. I mean besides the fact he can tell ALMOST everyone "Hey stop breathing" on an almost Kilgrave (Jessica Jones) type level. It was quite a train wreck. Way too much going on at once.

RiverRunning

8 years ago

I have to admit I didn't even realise that this film was even a thing... seems like the distributors didn't think it was going to be much either since they seem to have forgotten to advertise it (in Scotland or France at least).

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