The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed...

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The Dark Tower

Will the film do justice to the books?

Will Idris Elba do justice to Roland Deschain?

Will Matthew McConaughey do justice to Randall Flagg, The Man in Black?

If they could only bring to the screen what I see in my minds' eye when I read these books...

 
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I probably won't watch the movie. I thoroughly enjoyed the books and it's very difficult to adapt a book to the big screen, especially a King book. Never mind that there's like eight of the damned things lol
 
My take on seeing the trailer is that Eddie and Susannah will be missing entirely. The movie will be Roland, Jake and Flagg.
Probably won't even see Oy.
On its own the movie looks good, but if you are expecting it to follow the book you will be disappointed.

For some reason when reading the books I always pictured Sam Elliot as Roland. I guess he's too old now.
 
Never read the books, but the movie looks pretty awesome.

You will love it. If you're not jaded like the rest of us with our preconceived notions about how it should be, it's gonna blow you away if you like western/fantasy/sci-fi.

I know the combination sounds like its too much, but it's not.
 
My take on seeing the trailer is that Eddie and Susannah will be missing entirely. The movie will be Roland, Jake and Flagg.
Probably won't even see Oy.
On its own the movie looks good, but if you are expecting it to follow the book you will be disappointed.

For some reason when reading the books I always pictured Sam Elliot as Roland. I guess he's too old now.
You're probably right about most. If lose the grand scope of the story it will be greatly diminished as a movie in my mind.
 
Isn't Flagg the bad guy in all of King's books?
I know he was the bad guy in Eyes Of The Dragon (formerly The Napkins)

He's not the main bad guy in all of King's books, but he is in The Stand and I forget what else. He also appears in several other books as a shadowy figure behind the bad guy pulling the strings.

That's one of the minor plot lines in the series of books. Don't know that it will be explained in the movie, though.
 
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Since no one has mentioned it yet I guess I will. We do all realize how antigun Stephen King is? He is a big supporter of the Brady Campaign and contributor to many other gun control groups. Some of Mr. Kings quotes from his book "GUNS"

“Guys, gals, now hear this: No one wants to take away your hunting rifles. No one wants to take away your shotguns. No one wants to take away your revolvers, and no one wants to take away your automatic pistols, as long as said pistols hold no more than ten rounds. If you can't kill a home invader (or your wife, up in the middle of the night to get a snack from the fridge) with ten shots, you need to go back to the local shooting range.”

“Semi-automatics have only two purposes. One is so owners can take them to the shooting range once in awhile, yell yeehaw, and get all horny at the rapid fire and the burning vapor spurting from the end of the barrel. Their other use – their only other use – is to kill people”

“guess the question is, how paranoid do you want to be? How many guns does it take to make you feel safe? And how do you simultaneously keep them loaded and close at hand, but still out of reach of your inquisitive children or grandchildren? Are you sure you wouldn’t do better with a really good burglar alarm? It’s true you have to remember to set the darn thing before you go to bed, but think of this — if you happened to mistake your wife or live-in partner for a crazed drug addict, you couldn’t shoot her with a burglar alarm.”

Not saying this should dissuade anyone from going to see this movie but since I've never been a King fan to begin with I doubt I'll be catching this one.
 
Since no one has mentioned it yet I guess I will. We do all realize how antigun Stephen King is? He is a big supporter of the Brady Campaign and contributor to many other gun control groups. Some of Mr. Kings quotes from his book "GUNS"







Not saying this should dissuade anyone from going to see this movie but since I've never been a King fan to begin with I doubt I'll be catching this one.

You are right. He is as anti-gun as any.

I understand any ones stance that they do not want to support someone that is anti gun. I do believe we do more good or have a greater impact if we don't support anti gun enterprises at a more local level.

It is almost impossible in today's world to participate in anything, whether it's movies, books, or just the simple act of buying groceries, that someway, somehow doesn't have some type of anti-gun involvement.
 
My take on seeing the trailer is that Eddie and Susannah will be missing entirely. The movie will be Roland, Jake and Flagg.
Probably won't even see Oy.
On its own the movie looks good, but if you are expecting it to follow the book you will be disappointed.

For some reason when reading the books I always pictured Sam Elliot as Roland. I guess he's too old now.
The books were great, even though I don't care for King personally. While this movie does look entertaining, it is a shame the story will be one and done. This is one of the book series that should be several good movies. Unlike say, oh the Hobbit that was one book and several movies for no damn good reason. :p
 
The Dark Tower

Will the film do justice to the books?

Not if they end up following the last couple books in the series.

They totally sucked.

The first few books, however, were awesome.
 
“Semi-automatics have only two purposes. One is so owners can take them to the shooting range once in awhile, yell yeehaw, and get all horny at the rapid fire and the burning vapor spurting from the end of the barrel. Their other use – their only other use – is to kill people”

He's mostly right...but he didn't put those in the proper order.

"Mostly right" because saying they only have two purposes is flat wrong.
 
Well I've read the whole series.
Read the 1st 4 and waited years for the 5th in series to come out. I was a bookworm with the last ones.

I've read everything Stephen King has put out and this is one of my very favorite ones.

Bought my tickets for the Friday evening show.

Just hope the movie can capture most of the essence of the 8 books.
 
Well I've read the whole series.
Read the 1st 4 and waited years for the 5th in series to come out. I was a bookworm with the last ones.

I've read everything Stephen King has put out and this is one of my very favorite ones.

Bought my tickets for the Friday evening show.

Just hope the movie can capture most of the essence of the 8 books.
Report back after the movie! I am really hoping they do the best they can in just one movie with the story.
 
reading reviews online. This about sums it up:

  • I read the books - I hated the movie
  • I didn't read the books - The movie was great!
I'll probably go see it anyway.

BP
 
I didn't read much of the books but the super over the top CGI gunplay looked fun.
 
reading reviews online. This about sums it up:

  • I read the books - I hated the movie
  • I didn't read the books - The movie was great!
I'll probably go see it anyway.

BP
I guess this sums it up for me.

No way in hell you can condense those 7 books into 1hr 25min.

IMHO, it was a huge waste of my money this evening.

If you like that "over the top CGI gunplay" stuff, then it could be right up your alley.
If you wondered WTF was going on, remembering how the Gunslinger series started, folded out, and the last books, this makes not a lick of sense.

I'm gonna have to go back and re-read mine this fall/winter just to get this crap movie out of my head.
 
Well. I guess I should read the books.
I'm 0 for 2 now.
Dunkirk and Dark Tower.

Not great.

Trudi says she picks next. I don't blame her.
 
I guess this sums it up for me.

No way in hell you can condense those 7 books into 1hr 25min.

IMHO, it was a huge waste of my money this evening.

If you like that "over the top CGI gunplay" stuff, then it could be right up your alley.
If you wondered WTF was going on, remembering how the Gunslinger series started, folded out, and the last books, this makes not a lick of sense.

I'm gonna have to go back and re-read mine this fall/winter just to get this crap movie out of my head.
That is unfortunate. I don't see why they didn't at least try to make a trilogy out of the books. I don't know if the series has the following that the Lord of the Rings has, but it would seem they could have at least pulled off three movies also.
 
So, my wife is a reader like no other... She's a big SK fan, and we went to see The Dark Tower on Friday night. It was atrocious. The first half hour, we almost fell asleep. The rest of it was just a mishmash of crap, and easter eggs for his other books. It was worse than any of his Made for TV movies, and felt like a 90 minute Pilot episode of a Netflix Series. Bad. it was just bad.....

I too was an avid SK reader and the only adaptations of ANY of his novels that were halfway decent were Christine, Carrie, and The Shining. Everything since those early ones has been increasingly less than stellar. Although IT wasn't horrible, and certainly increased my wariness of clowns.
 
Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile were both great movies, IMHO.
And Stand By Me...

True.

It's been a while but weren't all of those short stories/ novellas of King's and not actually full fledged novels with two published under his pseudonym of Richard Bachman? It's splitting hairs I realize, and I should have been more specific in my original statement. In my mind I was mainly thinking of his main horror novels which I mainly read from age 14-20, now well over 25 years ago.

My point was, and still is, that it is very difficult to translate and adapt SK's world onto the small or big screen. It has only been done successfully (IMO) a handful of times at best.
 
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