The Dark Tower (2017) Review

The Dark Tower Review

Director: Nikolaj Arcel

Screenwriters: Akiva Goldsman, Jeff Pinkner, Anders Thomas Jensen, and Nikolaj Arcel

Producers: Akiva Goldsman, Ron Howard, and Erica Huggins

Starring: Idris Elba and Matthew McConaghey

Composer: Tom Holkenborg

Cinematographer: Rasmus Videbaek

Editors: Alan Edward Bell and Dan Zimmerman

Production Company: MRC

Part I: Introduction

I honestly didn't give a crap about this movie. The only reason I saw this movie was because I was bored. I wanted to just see Matthew McConaghey and Idris Elba battle it out. Keep in mind, that this movie is based off of Stephen King novels, and I didn't read the novels that this movie is based on. So, how is the movie? Is this movie a good adaptation of the books? No. Be warned, I'm going to go into spoilers. Not that it matters anyway because this movie sucks.

Part II: Plot Synopsis

A boy named Jake Chambers is having visions of the destruction of the Dark Tower, causing the world to be engulfed by darkness. Jake also envisions "The Man in Black" (Matthew McConaghey), an evil sorcerer, and "The Gunslinger" (Idris Elba). He must set out and find the last Gunslinger to stop the Dark Tower from being destroyed and save the world.

Part III: Direction & Style

Direction
This film has poor direction. The director doesn't really do anything to try to make this movie stand out or exciting.

Style
There is no style in this movie. It does nothing to stand out. It's stylistically bland.

Part IV: Visual Presentation

Cinematography & Framing
Cinematography is not good either. The movie has a pretty boring color palette. It's grey-looking. Nothing to catch your interest. There was actually one shot I actually liked and that was like this overhead shot that was hovering over this spinning thing. That was the only decent shot I actually saw in the whole movie. Everything else in a cinematography standpoint is, again, bland.

Camerawork
The camerawork is not horrible, but it's not stellar either. There are points in the action where the camerwork could have been smoother to capture the action better.

Acting
The acting is pretty awful, especially talking about Tom Taylor's performance as Jake Chambers. Literally, there was a scene where his mom dies. And he's supposed to be crying and he does for like a quick second and he just stops acting to cry and be sad. Pretty much, nobody didn't give any good performance. But, let's be honest, the only reason you came to see this movie is to see Idris Elba and Matthew McConaghey duke it out. So, how are their performances? Well, they aren't bad but they don't give good performances either. It's almost as if none of them give a crap. It's like they just put little effort into their performance and grabbed their paychecks.

Editing
The editing is horrid. Scene transitions often feel awkward at times. I'll get into pacing later, but the editing really could have used some work.

Visual Effects
Most of the visual effects were okay. It's nothing special really. To be fair, there wasn't very much visual effects used in this movie. But, sometimes, the visual effects would look bad. There is a scene where Matthew McConaghey is doing some magical stuff and.....it's not good.

Part V: Sound Design and Musical Composition

Sound Design 

The sound design is not that good either. Maybe this is me because I'm not 100% sure, but I think I heard a lot of dubbed lines. I especially heard a really obvious dubbed line from Matthew McConaghey one time. It sounded awful.

Score

The score is, you guessed it, bland. Nothing special. It doesn't stand out. 

Part VI: Screenwriting & Character Composition

Script & Screenwriting

This is some terrible screenwriting. The movie dumps a crap ton of exposition all over the movie. It's lazy writing. Barely any of the movie makes sense anyway despite how much this movie tries to explain things and dump tons of exposition.

Character Composition

The character composition sucks. The main character is really about Jake Chambers (or at least that's who we're supposed to follow throughout the movie), but we really don't care about him. The characters you really would actually even remotely give a crap about is Idris Elba and Matthew McConaghey just because they're A-list actors. The characters, by themselves, are horribly written or they're improperly developed. 

Pacing

The pacing is atrocious and it's the worst part of this film. The action is too few and feel too far in between. In fact, the action really doesn't pick up until like half of the movie. And the action isn't exciting to begin with. The movie is 95 minutes long, yet the action sequences don't even feel like they total up to 15 minutes. This movie felt really boring to watch. The movie rushes too much and doesn't take time to develop characters and make a well-made story arc. It reminds of The Mummy's attempt of launching a cinematic universe. This honestly feels like another half-baked attempt of trying to kickstart another cinematic universe...again.

Part VII: Verdict & Conclusion

Yeah, this movie sucks. It's boring and it fails at a lot of technical aspects when it comes to filmmaking. Maybe you'll enjoy Idris Elba fighting Matthew McConaghey. You would think this would probably be like an enjoyable, dumb, popcorn, action movie, but it's not. It even fails at entertaining you because the pacing is terrible and the plot doesn't make much sense despite how much the movie throws exposition at you. But, at the same time, it's not surprising that this movie sucks because they're trying to cram 7 books worth of content into one movie. I didn't read the books, but I can tell that the books are vastly superior than this movie and the movie didn't even show 10% of what the books had. If you can, read the books instead. They're most likely a lot better than the movie.

Score: D+