Review: Even Idris Elba’s Incredible Charisma Can’t Save ‘The Dark Tower’
After a decade in development, this adaptation of Stephen King’s eight-book western/sci-fi/fantasy epic hits cinemas just as current events are reminding us that symbolism matters. But The Dark Tower will probably annoy and disappoint fans of the books, and also fans of coherent themes and symbols.
The books dramatise a ritualistic clash between good and evil in a multiverse held together by the mystical tower of the title. In the post-apocalyptic wasteland of Mid-World, gunslinger Roland Deschain (Idria Elba) must repeatedly pursue and confront sorcerer Walter Padick, the Man in Black (Matthew McConaughey). Walter wants to destroy the Dark Tower and preside over the subsequent demonic chaos; Roland seeks the Tower as a representative of order and stability. On his wanderings, Roland accrues a posse of companions from various parallel versions of New York City, whose fates are bound together.
Director Nikolaj Arcel, and lead screenwriters Jeff Pinkner and the dread Akiva Goldsman, grasp that to adapt this sprawling saga into a nimble 95-minute feature film requires a certain mythic tone. But at the same time they seem confused by King’s medievalist themes, and afraid to relish the genre tropes of either westerns or fantasy stories. The Dark Tower is diverting enough, but feels blank and facile, in the same way a dream can seem totally meaningful while you’re dreaming it, but be totally silly in the light of day.
He Who Shoots With His Camera Has Forgotten The Face Of His Father
The best thing about the film is that it unfolds from the outsider perspective of Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor), a boy in a version of contemporary New York that’s being wracked by mysterious earthquakes. His mum (Vikings’ Katheryn Winnick) is struggling to understand Jake’s obsessive, nightmarish drawings – a mysterious Tower, a Gunslinger, a Man in Black, and sinister rat-creatures wearing masks of seamed human skin. But Jake’s stepdad (Nicholas Pauling) thinks the kid can’t get over his firefighter dad’s death, and believes Jake needs a refreshing stay in an upstate psychiatric hospital.
Why were the screenwriters not embarrassed?
We know from the beginning that Jake’s drawings are real: Walter (Matthew McConaughey) is in league with the rat-people to steal children from around the multiverse and harness their psychic energy to attack the Tower. Because this is a Stephen King adaptation, psychic powers are called “the shine”. And in the most hackneyed tradition of young adult fantasy, Jake’s the shiniest shiner who ever shone. (Sorry, Danny Torrance.)
It’s fun to watch Jake figuring out his situation using a combination of intuition, pluck, internet research and parkour. But when he finds a portal into Mid-World and comes face to gun-barrel with a jaded, lost Roland, Jake enters a mythology that the flat script isn’t even interested in exploring.
In a distressing tonal shift into fish-out-of-water comedy, Roland enters Jake’s New York. And finally, there’s a supernatural shoot-out as Roland seeks to stop Walter using Jake’s almighty ‘shine’ to power his Tower-destroying energy beam. This is all very embarrassing to write down. Why were the screenwriters not embarrassed?
The great thing about fantasy stories is their imaginative world-building, which provokes audiences’ curiosity. Parallel worlds of the sort we nostalgically fetishise in shows such as Stranger Things work best when they’re cloaked in mystery, making audiences want to figure out what it all means.
But Jake is the only genuinely curious person in this film. Even the fact Walter once killed Roland’s gunslinger dad (Dennis Haysbert) barely seems to matter to either Roland or Walter, let alone motivate them. So any larger mythology, such as what the Dark Tower represents – and what (or who) might be inside it – simply isn’t on the table.
Thank god for Idris Elba’s off-the-charts charisma. Even in the numb script’s lowest moments (such as when Roland tastes a hot dog), Elba lends his character a stoic, enigmatic gravitas. But McConaughey has none of the twinkling, good-ole-boy charm that could’ve made his character menacing as he casually commands life and death. And his skin-masked tech minions (who include Jackie Earle Haley, Fran Kranz and Abbey Lee) are neither truly scary nor enjoyably campy in the manner of They Live, The Cabin in the Woods or The Neon Demon.
I Do Not Kill With My Genre; I Kill With My Gun
You might be thinking, “Roland is a weird name for the hero of a western,” or perhaps, “If he’s a gunslinger, how come he doesn’t have a cowboy hat?” Such questions do not interest the filmmakers.
Inspired by a Robert Browning poem, which was inspired by Shakespeare, who was inspired by a Scottish fairytale, Stephen King’s books take a pretty nifty approach of combining the medieval chivalric epic with the spaghetti western genre. As well as Arthurian legends and The Lord of the Rings, King has cited The Good, The Bad and the Ugly as a key influence; Roland is often depicted on the book covers as a Clint Eastwood-esque cowboy.
Fans of the books will recognise the film’s few gestures to these themes as Arcel grudgingly dishes them out, such as a cinema advertising “Spaghetti Week at the Majestic!” or a reminder that the Gunslingers are descended from King Arthur and wield guns forged from the very metal of Excalibur. But in a cultural moment when just about any film is claimed to be “really a western”, it’s so strange how even a film with explicit western imagery – including guns, terrified frontier villagers, and a villain called the Man in Black – completely lacks the sense of moral confrontation that marks the genre.
Thank god for Idris Elba’s off-the-charts charisma.
It’s also weird how squeamish filmmakers are about Arthurian themes. Guy Ritchie couldn’t make a King Arthur movie without turning it into a cockney caper. And according to TransFormers: The Last Knight, alien robots forged Excalibur. But d’you know who absolutely loves medievalist imagery? Fucking white supremacists. Losers carrying plywood shields understand the seductive play of symbols in a way this film, which claims to be about a clash between good and evil, does not.
But one symbol with which The Dark Tower does feel worryingly comfortable is the gun. While most of the story is sketched with remarkable indifference, the film repeats the Gunslinger’s Creed several times. (“He who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.” And so on.) And it’s troubling that the philosophical dimensions of what it means to be a Gunslinger are obsessively ignored in favour of showing Roland’s uncanny skill in loading, aiming, firing and killing.
It’s depressing that the film’s primary motif is so divorced from the political, moral and emotional resonances that could give it real power. Roland can sure sling a gun, all right. But why? Lacking any satisfying answers, we can only infer that a guy who’s really good at killing people with guns (or hearts – whatever, NRA) is the best possible avatar of goodness. USA! USA!
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The Dark Tower is in Australian cinemas now.
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Mel Campbell is a freelance journalist and cultural critic. She tweets at @incrediblemelk.